Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Lovely way to spend a sunday morning....

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine, Andrea, recognized that I needed my a personal challenge (my self-induced challenges are how I cope in life)....so tempted me to the Fall Classic 1/2 marathon at UBC.

I could go on, but the long and short of it but....I showed up feeling highly unprepared as most, but happy to embrace the challenge .  Andrea and I have raced this race the past two years, she traditionally runs with me for the first 15-17kms while I push the pace, then when I die, she takes off.  Andrea is the athlete and I am, though very gutsy, the relatively unfit clydesdale in comparison. She has beaten me by within a minute over the past year, the year before in seconds.   Yet again, sad but true - the same thing happened, though she increased the margin!  Ugh.

Andrea thought a 4:45 pace would be good but I said no...no...no...we are running 4:30/km with a goal time of 1:36ish, both of us are PB'ing I said. The gun goes off and  as per the usual got caught up in the race and stupidly started for the first 5kms pacing at 4:12km, Andrea stayed by my side for the first 10km when I got a huge stitch and then just sat in a huge hurt locker with tiny little breaths for the middle kms, I seriously perfected the fly and die, while Andrea just pranced on and away! 

Luckily as Andrea pranced away, Janelle a talented UBC rower that I coach, appeared out of no where and we ran together for the middle kms, she kept my spirits high until..about 2kms to go where I slowed down for fear that I was having a heart attack. Ugh, again.

For 1hr39 mins my average HR was 185 for with 4km to go I saw 200 again and again.....sorry heart, seriously so very, very sorry...bad fly and die (last time the national team experts checked my max hr was 196?!?)

Ok, so silly pity party done, why not sign up for the next challenge. So Seattle Marathon in less than two weeks it is, just signed up yesterday. 

My heart has forgiven me and took me no time to rebound.  I thought no better time than now to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon at best, or have a fun, soggy, cold long run with 3000 like-minded people at worst...Running, for me is positive therapy in so many ways and will continue to be (I'll try to remember this at km 30-42 next weekend : )...