Hackweight’s BodyBlog

With ten weeks until my half-marathon, I decided to check my level of fitness by running a 5k race this morning. I had two reasons for this: first, I wanted to know if all of the increased mileage I had been piling on was paying dividends with improved endurance and better racing times, and second, for the hell of it, I was hoping to get over with this nagging goal of cracking 20 minutes in a 5k. I was under no illusions, however, that my priority was with the first goal and if I accomplished the second…whatever.

I started out by giving myself 20 weeks to prepare for the half, which is a considerably greater distance than I had either raced in the past or run during any point in my training. I did cover the distance on New Year’s Eve, however, there was no attempt to make it under any time other than the same day I started. Two and a half hours through the snow was good enough, but now I am seriously looking at a sub-1:30 time before I move on to the full marathon distance sometime next year.

Anyway, back to the 5k. I spent all of yesterday worried about a nagging cough and stuff in my lungs that would cause me to wheeze from time to time. I remained focused, however, telling myself, "you are going to run tomorrow and you will stick to a plan: run the first km fast  then ease into a comfortable but hard pace until the final km and then kick hard and finish all out."  "Don’t worry too much about the time," I said to myself, "you’ve been doing mostly long and slow miles and not much interval work and don’t expect any record breaking speed. Besides, you’re sick and should probably stay home anyway."

Well, I was sick and still am, but no, I didn’t stay home. With roughly fourty minutes before the start, I got into the huge line to the port-o-potties and stayed there until 10 minutes before the gun went off. I am partly to blame for this one, since I have a tendency to over drink before any exercise (my body doesn’t hold water very well and dehydraton is always a fear). Although I should have relieved myself earlier, I don’t think that there were enough facilities for the roughly 1500 runners there. Regardless, I was left with a few minutes to jog around and run a few strides before finding my spot near the front of the group. No sooner had I wedged myself into the crowd did I hear the airhorn. Crap! Not ready or warmed up I was off.

I ran the first kilometer hard and was aiming for 3:45 pace but was a little too fast, passing the 1km marker at 3:30. I knew that starting out too hard would cause problems and quickly slowed down to a 4 min pace. Once I hit the 3km mark, however, things went downhill fast. My lungs began to burn and my chest was hurting. I wasn’t having a heart attack but, there was no way I was going to maintain this pace today. I slowed down even more and by the time I got to the 4km mark I was slightly under 17 minutes and dying. I though, "how embarrassing this is, I’m going to have to walk or crawl the final 500m of a 5k, and I’m supposed to be training for a half-marathon!"

I think that being able to see the finish line and the sense of shame I would feel as a quiter in a distance I had done several times a week for over seven months gave me the drive to sprint the last 500 or so meters and finish in not just a personal best time of 20:02, but also third in my age group. I swear, that after it was over, I thought I was going to barf. That being done and over with, I have to make a few adjustments to my training,  but more importantly, I’m going to get some rest and get myself in condition to do some serious running.