Lesson one: if you decide to run anything more than 5k without training for it.. it will more than likely end horribly. (Just for some foreshadowing).
This has been a goal race for me since 2 years ago when I watched Kirk run it in Halifax on the Chain of Lakes Trail. Last year I completely trained for it, only to end up not running on the official day (myself and Kirk ran it for fun the weekend before anyways.. and you can read why in my recap here). Anyways, long story short, I saw his beautiful medal and decided on a new goal.. to earn a medal that represents each season. I already have a fall medal from the Valley Harvest half, so the next was a winter themed one, and this snowflake/abominable snowman medal was perfect.
Kirk and I left for the 3.5-4 hour drive to Moncton, hoping to make the kit pickup at the runners room. Luckily we got there before it closed and we're able to get the race kit? Which consisted of our bibs, a magazine, some snacks, an awesome runners room backpack (that I'm totally using as a day pack in Ecuador in 2 weeks!!) And a running toque. While at the store I bought a fleece buff for the race (since there was a 25% discount, and it's MUCH colder in Moncton than it was in NS.
After we picked up our race kit, we headed straight to the hotel to unpack our things. We stayed at the Fairfield Marriott which happened to be only about 6 minutes from the race venue.
Shortly after, we found an amazing vegetarian restaurant called Calactus and ate our faces off. The Supreme nachos were delicious and then I had a black bean burrito. I would have taken a picture, but we were so hungry after a long day of driving that we ate too fast to get our cameras out! Also as per tradition, we each had a pre-race day beer.
The next day we got up early, ate some oatmeal at the hotel breakfast then headed to the race. Turns out the race is in an industrial park.. which we hadn't realized.
Lesson two: pay attention to the race route and plan accordingly.
For some dumb reason I was thinking that the route would be similar to the Halifax hypothermic half.. with it being in a trail. Boy was I wrong! Neither of us brought road shoes and we seriously suffered.
Lesson three: trail shoes DO NOT work well for road races.
The race started at 9am sharp, with the Runners room maintaining prefer timing, as usual. They're so organized and it makes race day go SO much smoother.
Anyways, we started out with a great group of people following the 2:15 pace bunny. It's a jump, considering I hardly trained for this, and my fastest half is currently 2:20. The first 8km were going very well. I felt amazing and full of energy, was keeping up no problem with the pace bunny.. on perfect pace for a new half PR!
Somewhere around 8-9km in, I started to feel a familiar pain. The dreaded awful hip pain I know too well. I have been healing a stress fracture for over a year now and in my long runs sometimes the pain comes back to torture me. I think it was a combination of not being used to the repetitive pounding on the pavement, not wearing the proper shoes and the cold weather. It was minus 20°c and that made the joints super stiff. Safe to say, my knees and hips were hurting.
At work when someone is in pain, we have them use a pain scale. 0/10 being no pain, 10/10 being the worst pain you ever felt. By the time we reached around 17km I was at an 8/10 on the pain scale. At this point 2:15 was way out of reach, and I just wanted to finish the race without an injury.
Luckily Kirk was there to distract me with conversations about timbits and summer to do lists, because I couldn't have finished strong without him.
Lesson four: when the going gets tough, the tough rely on their running buddy. What you didn't know that's how the saying goes??
Overall we weren't last, and we certainly weren't in the top half, but I worked my butt off to finish. These hard races.. where we struggle to get through, to break through our walls and ignore the pain, these are the runs that cause us to grow and become stronger.
Lesson five: earned, not given.
I come out of this race, not with a new PR, or even a great story about achievement, but rather with a shiny new medal and knowing that I fought for every step to earn it.
The Rural Runner
0 comments:
Post a Comment