Army Run

The Army Run was actually a week ago. It went better than expected. My legs recovered quickly from the marathon but my iron levels didn't. My iron was probably lowered during the summer illnesses to begin with, and I have not been consistent about taking iron pills since then. So, two days before the Army Run, the old foot glitch came back, the same thing which happened last summer shortly after I went off the iron pills completely and suddenly. I was having trouble walking on Friday. Saturday was better, but I still wasn't quite sure what would happen during the race. Last time, the foot glitch permitted me to run around 8:00/mile quite nicely, which meant that if I had the fitness to pull that off, I could perhaps get close to 1:50 this year after all.

Another glitch was another cyst..this is still being investigated but I had an infection and fever for a couple of days in the week before the Army Run and I ended up not running much that week. A mini-taper!

We (my husband, my brother and I) were late getting to the race start even though it was maybe a 10 minute walk from our house. LOL. Classic chip-timing lassitude. We hopped in somewhere after the 2 hr bunnies and then walked to the start--the crowd was very thick. I quickly lost my husband and brother and realized that I was still wearing my watch. I'd decided to go entirely by feel for my foot's sake, so I switched the watch setting to the alarm or whatever, so I wouldn't be tempted to look at it. This worked well and I didn't look at it once.

Well, I was too far back. The crowd slowed down unbearably on the first hill and there were too many ipod-zombies veering into my path--I got tired of saying "on your left" in vain and I didn't want to get too worked up, but I had to go a certain pace and so I had to find the holes to get by. My legs had a mind of their own. At times, I felt like I was going too fast, but I couldn't slow down. This has happened on previous 1/2s with success, and I ceded control to my legs.

I passed the 2:00 bunnies and then the 1:55 bunnies...I saw one of the 1:50 bunnies about 9-10 miles in and decided that I would catch up to him/her by the time we got to Pretoria Bridge, about a mile from the finish.

This didn't quite happen, and I never caught the bunny, but I honestly didn't slack on pace. Mentally, I felt very strong, and negative feelings about discomfort and so forth were quickly banished; at times, I thought about slowing down, but then I reminded myself that 1:50 would be a PB for the year, how grand, and if I had pretty much caught up to the 1:50 bunny, I could finish the job. And if I didn't, I would feel terrible; I owed it to myself to get a result that I would be proud of; I deserved a good result, etc, etc. This mental talk worked.

I was about six seconds behind the bunny; I narrowed his/her lead in the final 300M or so but my efforts weren't quite enough. Still, it was great to see 1:50:xx on the clock. We'd started late: my chip time was just under 1:48. Not a PB, but my old plateau! Very encouraging. I felt so thrilled after the race; it was one of my highest post-race highs, I think. The rest of the day was woefully unproductive because I wasn't on the planet.

It was also swell to finally run the Army Run with my husband there, even though we lost each other! The first year, 2008, he was in Iraq. The second year, I had the cath surgery 3 days before so my "race" was shuffling 400m to the end to hand in my chip (I still picked up the race shirt; figured I'd earned it). Last year, we were out of town.

He and my brother ran 1:51:XX, which they were both thrilled with. I was impressed!

I think I will do at least one more 1/2 this year...I will rejoin run club too but basically run by feel. I've been concentrating a lot on form recently and this seems to be paying off. The bodyrock routines have helped a lot too with tightening my core. I'm trying to do 3 routines per week.

I haven't run much this past week: didn't feel like it. I've been taking an iron pill every day and my foot feels almost normal now. I actually jogged today! This is good because the dog hasn't had enough exercise these past three weeks. Oh, yeah, I got an ingrown toenail after the race (I've been treating it and it's almost back to normal too)...I guess running a full and a 1/2 within two weeks of each other wasn't the best idea!