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November 29, 2005
Having Left You All in Suspense, I'm Sure...
...let's catch up.
When I last wrote, I was contemplating the upcoming weekend and trying to decide how to incorporate my fast running for the week. I did ultimately run Fresh Pond--I always prefer that to tempo runs on my own. It was an incredibly cold day and, for a while, it seemed that not too many people were going to show up--just me and the old-timers. Eventually, we got a group of about 40 people, but not too many women. So I pretty much ran in no-woman's-land from the half-mile mark on. I wasn't really in contact with anyone for the rest of the race; combined with the fact that I went out in 6:23, which was a little fast for me, it pretty much felt like the longest 2.5 miles of my life. But I ran 16:08, which is 40 seconds faster than I ran in early September and is only 7 seconds slower than my Fresh Pond post-collegiate PR (I probably ran faster than 16:01 there when I was in college, but I didn't keep track then.). I was just happy to get the effort in and it made me feel pretty good about my conditioning as I looked ahead to the race I'd signed up for (with my whole family) on Thanksgiving. I started thinking about a time goal for that race and thought that maybe 20:40 wouldn't be too unreasonable for a 5K on the road.
Until I hit a roadblock.
The Tuesday after the Fresh Pond race (after a 9.5-miler on Sunday and 5-miler on Monday), I went out for a run. Right away, my right hip and both hamstrings really hurt and my shins felt incredibly tight. Since these were the initial symptoms of last fall's bursitis in my hip, I turned around after a mile. I felt I was probably being over-cautious, but decided that my primary goal was getting to the starting line of the Thanksgiving race as healthy as possible. Unfortunately, it turned out that I wasn't being overly cautious--I ended up having to take three days completely off that week and did no more speed before the race. However, this did mean that I showed up to race on Thanksgiving pain-free with only a little bit of tightness here and there in my legs. Naturally, at this point, I'd re-evaluated my time goal; the new plan was to break 21:00 and to pick off as many women as I could throughout the race.
I'll save my race report for my next entry to keep this one from getting too long. Plus, if I'm going to get my run in before class, I better get moving. So I'm leaving you in suspense again...=)
Posted by Megan at November 29, 2005 11:13 AM
Comments
This race story sounds really good. I'm anticipating a story focused on serious training vs. the sheer ability of genetics. Boy oh boy oh boy, I can't wait to hear how it turns out.
Posted by: Mr Uy at November 29, 2005 12:12 PM
You're so cruel, leaving us in suspense! I'm sorry to hear about the roadblock, but great job at Fresh Pond!!
Posted by: Alison at November 30, 2005 07:41 AM