Done Deal

Yahoo – I ran my half-marathon, as per my wish-goal from last autumn. Better yet,  I raced it, which was beyond my original hope of just being able to finish!

Back-up to the end of my last blog: as to plan, I got my long  run in on Easter weekend.  Prior to heading out  I did some gentle morning stretching, low intensity yoga stuff that gets my kinks out. However – this particular morning I was staying with friends and opted not to use my yoga mat which was still in the car. I heard something click in my pelvis doing the warrior pose, and though I didn’t feel my foot slide,  I had that feeling of  “oh no, that stretch went too far.” You all know how it is – you quickly move your body around to make sure you’re not crippled, willing your mind not to worry: that it’s really nothing at all.  I got out the door and did the 21kms anyway (on messy, snow-slushy roads), but the last 10 were tough, with the final 5 just terrible. My gait was off, I felt tight everywhere and I knew I had at least ‘a little something’ to deal with here.

To shorten the story, in the following weeks I did lots of gentle stretching, ran shorter distances, cycled, and eventually visited my osteopath, who gave me an encouraging “your pelvis responded to the adjustment very nicely”. The non-plan for my training was unravelling: two weeks before the race a 16km went quite well and after that I had to be satisfied with short stuff and a prayer (make that many prayers).

So it’s the week prior to the Bluenose. Typical to my PMS (Pre-Marathon Syndrome) I was feeling ‘nigglings and twinges’ . Old habits tempted me to take NSAID’s to deal with any inflammation that might be lurking in my joints  and I yielded to that thought and took a couple Motrin on the Thursday before the race. Then I realized that was not letting my body perform with the healthy and intentional care and treatment I’ve been giving it this past year – so from then on, my strategy was to go out and do that race the best I could with what I had to work with.

May 17th in Halifax was perfect for those of us who like coolish, overcast running weather. No wind either.  About 17oo half marathoners plus a whack of marathoners.  My thought was to keep a 5 minute/km pace if my knee was happy and my engine room had steam. This was a little tricky as I saw very few kilometre markings and I’m not into techie gizmos that help you determine that stuff.  Thankfully my internal pacing mechanism kicked in and with relief the 8km mark coincided with 40 minutes on my watch. The route went (up) through Point Pleasant Park and somewhere in there I saw another marker – otherwise I was in the dark as to “where are we?” A couple guys later told me we were between 16 and 17 kms when we really weren’t that far as I got the same information more than a couple kms later along the route!

“Ive been following you for the last 3-4 kms: you’ve got a great pace and form. Keep going, it’s only another mile, and you’ll be in at sub 1:45.” This was the unknown female runner whose encouragement pushed me in to the finish line (which has a cruel joke with a hill up Duke Street) on Brunswick Street. Chip time: 1:45:41, 5:02/km pace, 5th in my category – more than 5 minutes off my PB but significantly  faster than my expected 1:53 zone.

I’m over-the-top thankful. Recovery has gone well, I presently don’t have another running race on my radar, but I’m doing a two-day, 90-km/day cycle this weekend so will have another sport report soon!