Saturday, July 5, 2014

Week 27: Fourth of July 5K

I went into yesterday’s 5k wanting to finish it in 40 minutes or less.  It wasn’t an unreasonable goal. I’ve been averaging 12 minute, 30 second miles in my training of late, so I was feeling fairly certain I could finish it in 40 minutes.  I went to bed Thursday night feeling pretty excited about what the next day would bring.

Things did not go as planned.

I woke to a killer sinus headache the morning of the race, the kind that makes you nauseous and want to stay in bed.  I forced myself out of bed and took both ibuprofen and sudafed with my breakfast.  I drank as much water as I could stand.  By the time I made it to the starting area an hour later I was just beginning to feel better.  The headache was down to a dull roar and I was able, for the most part, to ignore it.  I paced up and down the street to warm my muscles up and loosen my joints.  By the time the 5K actually started I was feeling pretty good.

This course, thankfully, was nowhere near as hilly as the last course I ran.  The hills were there, but none of them were particularly steep.  I found myself walking for 30 second intervals here and there, but I was still doing pretty good, and when I checked my time at the one mile marker I was on track.  

I had just spotted the two mile marker when the muscles in my left calf started to spasm.  I was shocked.  Believe it or not, I’d never had that happen to me in all the time I’ve been training for these races.  The pain was excruciating and I had to slow down considerably until the cramp in my calf eased up a bit.  By the time I was running at a decent pace again, I was turning the last corner.

I could see the finish line in the distance, and I started to up my pace a bit.  When I was close enough to read the time on the clock, my heart seemed to skip a beat and then sink into my stomach.  The time read 40:23.  I used the last of my reserves to get myself across the finish line with a time of 42:01--1 minute and 31 seconds faster than my last race, but 2 minutes, one second slower than I’d wanted.  The disappointment I felt in that moment was so heavy I felt like I couldn’t breathe.  I hadn’t realized how much time I’d lost at the beginning of that 3rd mile.

The first sob came as a volunteer handed me a bottle of water.  I managed to take a few sips before the second sob escaped me.  By then my husband had found me, and after seeing my expression, he wrapped his arms around me and held on tight.  I hid my face against his shoulder and cried.  Looking back at that moment now, I can’t quite put a finger on why I was so upset.  It wasn’t like I didn’t beat my last time.  But I had my heart set on finishing in 40 minutes, and that little failure hurt more than I imagined it would.

Eventually my husband and I made our way to breakfast at our favorite cafe, and after devouring a blueberry bran muffin I found that I was able to think about the race more objectively.  So I didn’t finish the race in 40 minutes.  But I did finish, and I was faster than the last race.  I had to admit to myself that even though I didn’t finish in 40 minutes, I had still made significant progress.  I felt a little better about the whole thing after coming to that conclusion.  

And there’s always next time.


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