Monday, October 22, 2012

catching up

Um, I've gotten really lousy at updating this.  Mostly because I've been trying to not focus so much on time and just on running, because that's what I wanted to do for the race, given how rough the training time was.

Quick update:

Knee: better, but not great.  It bothers me about half the time, but it's more feeling uncomfortable than actually debilitatingly painful.  I'd say it's about 65-70%.  Not strong enough that I feel like I can really go all-out.  I am still nowhere near the pace I was running pre-injury, which is depressing in some ways, but it's also been good for making me more focused on just running rather than trying to shave off a second or two.

Pregnancy awesomeness:  much more tired than I would normally be, lots more pain from the cyst.  Manageable, but not making it my best training year ever.

Half-marathon:

  • All things considered, the training actually went pretty well.  There were a lot of runs where I was very ill, and in a lot of pain, and there were a handful where I couldn't run more than a mile or two before I had to stop and just wait for the pain and the nausea to abate so I could start again.  I missed 2 runs, both in Week 10 (3 miles and 11 miles.  I took the 3 off because I was so incredibly exhausted [it was also a grading week] and I had been very very sick the week before.  Took the 11 off later that week because my dad was in town, I hadn't seen him in months, it was Conference weekend, and I wanted to go hiking with him rather than leave to go running in the short time we actually had to do anything).  Ran every other single run, 5 days a week for the 12 weeks, despite some pretty crippling pain, nausea, and fatigue.  Entire first trimester.  So fun!
  • I was pleased with how the race itself went.  My time was 2:08:19, which is a full 10 minutes slower than my PR for the last half-marathon I ran, during which I was also pregnant.  There were no splits on the course, so I really didn't know how fast I was going, and I was fine with that (I left my Nike + at home on purpose because I didn't want to push myself harder than my body could go).  Let me tell you...this is a real triumph for me.  It may seem sort of oxymoronic, but I have SUCH a hard time not being ultra-competitive all the time that actually backing off was way more of a challenge!  I did have one freak-out moment at mile 8, when I was worried about going over 2:10 (which I'd kind of mentally set as the point at which I would feel lame about the race), and I asked Neil to tell me that I was okay because I was running a race with a bad knee, an ovarian cyst, and 3 months pregnant, and thankfully we've been married long enough that he knows that I just need to hear it from someone else to accept that it's okay.  So he handled that and then I was fine again and stopped panicking.  It was a really fun race, because I was just going for miles and not minutes, and I kept being surprised that it was already another mile down!  Which was great.  In all honesty, I don't think I could set a PR on this course without a lot lot lot of effort, because it was incredibly hilly.  They actually changed the course because there was so much initial outcry about how hilly it was, and man, I can't even imagine how exhausting that first course would have been, because this one was intense.  Our town sits on a hill, and then there's a river, and then another town on a hill across the river, and we just kept running up and down those hills between the towns.  And the last 2 miles were almost all uphill, which was pretty murderous at that point.  The final approach to the finish line was all uphill until mile 12.9, and I have never seen so many people walking!  It was crazy.  I checked the Facebook page afterward and a lot of people were talking about how they had run tons of races and this was by far their worst time ever (then again, the guy who won ran it in 1:05, so somebody was doing just fine!)
  • Recovery has been pretty good--I was stiff Saturday and my joints really hurt, but the joint achiness was gone Sunday, and there was just some residual muscle soreness.  We went on a long walk as a family Sunday evening (the uphills on that were hard on my hip flexors, but otherwise it was fine) and then I ran 3 miles today and it was totally fine.  I would have liked to run more, but I didn't start early enough, and I thought I should probably take it easy today anyway.
So there's the last while in a nutshell.