Yesterday morning I went to the gym to run at 7:00. It was a Saturday – trail run day – when everyone meets at 8:00 to carpool/caravan down to the Redmond Watershed to enjoy a nice long run. Why was I running at this odd time? I had a couple of reasons. The main one was that Saturday was also drive-to-Salem-Oregon-to-retrieve-daughter-for-winter-break day and I didn’t have time to put in a full trail run morning.
Did I need to run on Saturday? Sort of. I last ran on Tuesday. My back had been sore for a couple of days (minor tweak doing some cross training) and on Wednesday and Friday I saw Dr. Annie for some treatment. Part of the treatment is of course the “R” in RICE – rest for a couple of days. Today was the 5K race at the 12Ks of Kirkland. So – sore back, treatment, not running for several days – I had to find out on Saturday if I’d be OK to run today, so I ‘needed’ an easy two mile shakeout run.
Just after I started running Steve showed up. He also had a commitment that prevented him from making it to the trail run. It was a happy coincidence to have someone familiar to run with at that odd time.
There are some odd things about today’s race too. The 2010 version was supposed to have been my first “test” after I had started running again. Geek that I was I had even mapped the course so that I could run the same elevation profile on the treadmill. Then I had “The Ankle Injury” and I could not run. Sharon took my number and ran the race in my place. She won, which caused some moments of confusion for the race organizers who could clearly see that Iain Ross M4049 was the first woman across the finish line. Sharon got that straightened out and collected her hardware.
Finally, a year later, I was again looking at this race as a real test of what I can do. I have started worrying that races and I just don’t go together. I’d sign up for a race and pull a hamstring or develop painful plantar fasciitis and have to skip the race or severely limit my effort. I was jinxed. I signed up for this race and planned my training for the few weeks leading up to it. I monitored the state of my seemingly oft-injured legs to make sure I did not pull a hammie. Everything was going great and then I went and tweaked my back a week before the race. Are you kidding me? It felt OK to run on Tuesday, and the Doc’s words on Wednesday and Friday were encouraging, so I held onto my plans to race and did not go out in search of an avatar to run for me.
My training for the last few weeks has been spotty – not quite hitting the gradual mileage increases that I had planned, and the runs were mostly at a good aerobic base pace between 10 and 11 minutes per mile, sometimes slower. Still I felt that something around 28 minutes for the 5K was a reasonable goal. I knew I could push myself faster than my training pace, but could I do it for three miles? Could I do it without injuring myself?
During the race I paid attention to those troublesome muscles and they never complained. I started out taking it easy for the first mile, which was mostly a gradual uphill climb. After that hill the course was pretty flat with a few quick, steepish downhills. I let myself go on those downhill parts and settled into a quicker, but not too challenging pace, making sure that keeping my form was easy for the second mile. For mile number 3 I pushed myself. I think I hit the right pace because there were a few times I could feel my shoulders scrunching as my form started to break. I reminded myself that the running would be easier if I relaxed and regained my form. I rounded that last turn with my finishing kick, heard the cheers of my teammates, and heard the race announcer saying that finishers coming in now are comfortably below 28 minutes. Cool! I hit my target!
Actually, it was even better than that – 27:13, an 8:46 pace. I’m sure I can shave a few more minutes off that time by next year.
Although it took me a lot longer to get this test done than I ever thought it would, I am really pleased with the result. With all those setbacks this year I sometimes heard that inner skeptic quietly asking, “Is this working? Are you sure you want to keep doing this?”
Yeah, it is working. Yeah, I’m sure!
