Friday, October 18, 2013

Holy Shit, She's Actually Running A Race.

I know--believe me, I'm as shocked as you are.

When I roll up for this 10K on Saturday, it will have been 146 days since I last stood at the starting line of a race.

146 days ago I couldn't walk.

129 days ago I couldn't walk without crutches.

111 days ago I couldn't run.

55 days ago I couldn't run more than 5 miles.

No, I am not even remotely in the kind of shape I want to be in. No, I won't be PRing or placing on Saturday. But dammit, I can run 6.2 miles without breaking myself, and that's not nothing.

The plan going into Saturday is, there is no plan. Okay maybe there's kind of a plan. Even though I know I'm not in shape to race this really well, I do want to use the opportunity to see what kind of fitness I've got right now under race conditions, which is not something I was feeling terribly confident about last week. Since seeing my PT on Tuesday, though, I've had pretty much a 180° turnaround. I've had two great runs this week (5 & 6 miles respectively) & while yes, there is still that little niggle of pain in my hip flexor, it's staying in the 2-3/10 range and not getting any worse, so I'm continuing to take my PT's advice & just ignore it rather than letting it sideline me for days. My six miler Thursday evening felt great, which went a long way towards boosting my confidence about this race.


Bib(less) man!! Do you have any idea how long it's been
since I've made a bib man? Clearly, she is almost as excited as I am.

My usual strategy in a 10K is to start out in the 7:15 range, then gradually ratchet down, & give it everything I have left in the last mile or so. I think I might still try to start out in the 7:15 range just to see how it feels, but I'm guessing that absolutely best case, I'll just hold on to that pace all the way through (finish time around 45:00), or I'll find after a couple of miles that I need to ease back to 7:20-25 (finish time ~45:40). And hey, if I can finish the whole race at a sub-7:30 pace, that'll still be more of a tempo run than I've gotten in since I started running again in July. I've been doing my easy runs in the 8:10-15 range, so absolute worst case, I feel pretty confident I'll be able to run sub-8's & finish under 50 minutes.

But really--whatever happens, it's just more information for me to use as I get back into more structured training & look towards the Berkeley Half. (As opposed to right now where it's basically, "Did running happen? Awesome. Did it not feel terrible? Bonus.") I have some reasonable guesses about what will probably happen, but no real goals except to finish & not feel like death.

It's a bit late for #throwbackthursday but I'll leave you with one of my favorite songs from my junior high days by the lovely and wise Des'ree. I heard it somewhere recently and kind of went "Yeah; yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about all this."

See you on the other side of this thing. ;)

If you're running, cheering, or will just be in the neighborhood, let me know & I'll try to look for you!!

12 comments:

  1. I hope it goes okay, it seems like you were just complaining about an injury on your last post though. I guess race it smart.

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    1. Nope, last post was celebrating my PT telling me that I was a lot better & probably completely healed, & then having a really great run. :)

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  2. I'm in roughly the same boat; the 510 will be my first race in a year, and I'm going in on training that could have been stronger. I'm looking forward to the race, but trying not to think about it too much so as not to psych myself out. Good luck to both of us!

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  3. Good luck! You give me hope that I can recover and get back to my favorite races!

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  4. Go out and have a great run! Run it smart.. I LOVE this song, too!

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  5. Awesome pictures of the racers. I wish I still lived in the Bay Area so I could have done the race. It looks like so much fun.

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