Pre-race
CIM part 3! I felt very lucky to have made it to the starting line. Literally the day before my 14 week training block was supposed to start, I had a freak accident where Finn's leash knocked a metal pole onto the back of my ankle and I had stitches in the achilles area (but not IN my achilles, it was a blunt force injury, so not that deep). I naively thought I'd be back jogging in a few days. In actuality, I was on crutches for 6 days, wheeling around the hospital (work) on a scooter the PTs lent me, and unable to even put shoes on until the stitches came out 2 weeks later. I had to take Finn to daycare everyday because I couldn't walk him. I even had to uber to work the first day because I have a manual transmission. It would be a few more days after the stitches came out before I could start running again. I had a pretty good bone bruise, but after about 6 weeks it was a non issue. | About the same time I started having some health problems. Unfortunately these are still ongoing because I initially wasn't allowed to make an appointment, and when the issue continued and I was allowed to make an appointment (*eyeroll) they then couldn't get me in until mid December- so I still don't know what's going on. I did question at this point if I could train through the issues and if I'd need a procedure that would prevent me from running CIM. The third time I thought I might not make it was a month from race day. I was starting to have pelvic pain and Dr. Google (I know better than to consult Dr. Google) freaked me out that I may have another piriformis-like (aka NEVER ENDING) injury. A quick PT appointment helped enough to allow training and I only missed one run and some pace work, which surprised me a lot- I was having quite a bit of pain on my long runs, but each one after starting the exercises I was told to do got better! |
Getting to the start
Start to 5k
We took off. Coming down to sea level I had expected to have to slow down to 7:30's in the beginning, but I felt slugglish. First mile 7:39. Okay, that's fine. It's early, better than starting out too fast. But then the second mile- 7:49. What on earth? I couldn't speed up- I knew I was giving the appropriate effort and speeding up would only cause me to implode later, so I just kept trottin along. The 3:15 pace group was long gone, then the 3:20 pace group swallowed me up and spit me out the back. To be honest I was a little embarrassed, knowing how many people were tracking at home. I had a moment of thinking about having to tell people it just wasn't my day, and how the marathon just isn't my distance, but then transitioned to thoughts of, okay well- you're still going to PR if you hold this pace, so let's party. Force that smile, find some people to run with, work with the crowd. I ran happy at both my half marathon races this year (and both were 3 minutes PRs) so I knew I wanted to do the same here. This is supposed to be fun! I'm certainly not winning anything!
I started to get warm less than 3 miles in, but I was having trouble getting my shirt off with my hat, sunglasses, handheld bottle, and gels stuffed up the sleeves. I finally had to just stop completely on the side of the road to take it off! Facepalm. Mile 3, 7:43.
Miles 4-9
Miles 10-15
Miles 11-15 were nothing memorable- just happy to be moving faster but trying to keep the effort appropriate. At some point somebody ran past me breathing HARD and I thought... I am not working hard enough. I sped up. 7:13, 7:21, 7:22, 7:20, 7:27