Well this was fun, actually it was a lot of fun. My coach sent me my workouts last week and on Sunday said there was a half marathon in Xenia and that I should do it. Well, he is wicket fast, so I knew there was no way I would run with him, Red has been having shin problems, so he wasn't able to run with me either. I have an awesome running buddy who jumped on the idea of doing a half marathon at the drop of a hat. Let me point out that Ali is super fast and super tall, but we can usually stay together during our training run, so I figure this was a great chance to see what I could do. This all sounds well and good, and on Monday and Tuesday morning it still sounded great. Then Tuesday evening I get ready to get on my bike trainer and I smash my pinky toe against it, not just a little bit, but it popped and cracked, and I'm pretty sure it's broken. It swells like a little grape and hurts like no other. Yep, perfect timing.
Well Wednesday I can barely walk in any remote sense of the word. Thursday I can walk a little bit better and attempt to run. Wearing shoes was not a thing, so I ran around the track in the grass with Ali for about 6 miles. So long as I was careful and barefoot, I could run. Well that's fine and dandy, but I have a half marathon that I can't go barefoot in and won't be in a nice little controlled track. Hmmm...Well my coach brought me the smallest pair of shoes that he has, which are still a size 9 in men (I wear a 7-7.5 in women), so that the fabric doesn't crush my toe. These shoes looked like clown shoes, but felt amazing on my feet so I didn't care. One of my clients has the same shoes, but much closer to my size, but still a size too big so it left room for my toe to be cranky on its own. She brought me those shoes on Saturday and they worked like a charm! I could walk normally, even run carefully and without too much of a problem. Motrin + slightly bigger shoes = happy running midget!
Sunday morning comes, and I've been able to do all of my workouts the past week so I had some tired legs. But I was still excited to run with Ali, then it dawned on me. I had been looking at this weekend as just another training run, and when we got to the start there were people everywhere seriously geared up and prepping for a race. Oh yeah, this was still going to be a race. Well Ali surprised me and I discovered that she makes the perfect long run training partner, but not always the best idea for a long race partner. She is FAST and she sees people in front of her as people that should be picked off continuously. I realize that's a good thing, but that's not what I was prepared for. During our runs of 10+ miles we normally chit chat, wander a few places, stop for traffic, and generally relax. The last time we ran 13 miles it took us about 2:30 or more. Our time for the Xenia half was 1:54:54, just a wee bit faster. I learned that I can in fact run in the shoes that my client gave me, and run fast at that. I can also run and drink at the same time now. But when I slow down to drink gatorade, I still drown a bit. If I pinch the cup so it's more like a funnel it works a lot better than leaving it open all the way. During one of the gatorade stops I slowed for a drink and Ali kept moving because she wanted to get the people in front of her. Ok, that's fine, I caught her really quick then she saw that we had 4 miles left in the race, ok that's fine. She took off like a bat out of hell and I had no chance. I grabbed another quick drink, nearly choked to death so I slowed way down, and by the time I could breath normally she was WAY in front of me. I decided to try to close the gap and realized that she wasn't going to make it easy for me. She was on a mission to pass as many people as possible between now and the 4 miles back to the finish line. Every time I started to make up ground, she started to speed up to get to the people in front of her. FINALLY there was a long gap between her an the people in front of her, I'm basically sprinting for 3.5 miles and yelled at her to not pass those people or else I would kill her. I was a little grumpy and very tired. I ended up catching her and just about lost my religion cursing. It was intense. She finally told me that during those 4 miles she had been running 8:20min/miles which meant that I was running under 8 minute miles to get to her, ugh, that explained why I wanted to kill something. Either way, we ended up negative splitting the race and came within a minute of my Half Marathon PR. So I went into my race thinking I was just going to enjoy it and do a nice low key training run, and I came out super tired and close to a PR. Ugh.
Now this week I have another long week of training and clients, plus it's my sisters Bridal Shower this weekend. I'm some how supposed to get a 60 mile ride and a 19 mile run in this weekend. Holy crap. I'm thinking the ride may be on Sunday morning and the run may be Monday afternoon or something. yeesh.
On a positive note, my toe is still very sore and hates me, but it was just fine during the run and now I know that my current fitness is increasing and I'm faster already this year than when I finished last year. I also have 4 more weeks until the Flying Pig, which means 6 weeks out from my first Half Ironman Distance of the year. Who knows what will happen between now and then. I foresee a lot of organizing of my life, a lot of protein being consumed, and my compression gear going into over drive.
A neat thing I saw on my friend's Facebook status: Control what you can and let God control the rest.
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