Live & Learn

Vancouver Lake Half Marathon
Vancouver, WA

Overall Time: 1:56:04 (8:50 m/m)
Placing: 228/401 OA, 81/200 F, 19/42 AG (35-39)

Splits
1M - 8:27
2M - 8:26
3M - 8:25
4M - 8:26
5M - 8:24
6M - 8:38
7M - 8:47
8M - 9:01
9M - 8:59
10M - 9:12
11M - 9:11
12M - 9:22
13M - 9:37
Finish - 1:03

Fashion Report: Black Marathon Girl skirt, burgundy New Balance LS tech shirt, goofy black compression socks, LIT hat
Breakfast Report: Apricot & cherry granola, soy milk, coffee, water
Race Nutrition: Raspberry Hammer gel 15 minutes before the start, vanilla Hammer gel at mile 6 and water at all the aid stations
Post Race Libation: Deschutes Cinder Cone Red

Racing today may not have been one of my more intelligent decisions. I'd been fighting pain in my left leg (likely a stubborn bout of tendinitis) since Christmas which really affected my training. I hadn't done speedwork in forever and I just came off the steepest taper I had ever done in an effort to get myself to race day mostly healthy. My original goal was to run sub-1:50. Aerobically, I was fit enough to do it but my body had its own ideas. By the time race day rolled around, I just wanted to get through the race and not be more injured than when I started. Even so, my plan was to go out at sub-1:50 pace and hold it for as long as my leg can withstand. Someone should have slapped me.

It was your typical, cold, rainy, dreary winter day in the Pacific Northwest. Pretty darn miserable actually. It would have been easy to look out the window then go back to bed. But no, I got up, stumbled around sleepily, almost put soy milk in the coffee maker, and was standing around in the damp with 400 of my closest friends who were equally as frozen as I. The cold rain lifted by the time the race started and didn't start up again until 90 minutes in. At least it wasn't windy....at first. The course itself was flat and fast as it wound through Vancouver Lake Park then across country roads to Frenchman's Bar Park and then back again. We actually passed the start/finish areas three times which was great for the spectators but was tough mentally once the entrance to the pain cave was breached. The back-and-forth layout of the course also let us MOPers grab a glimpse of the local fastholes who come out in droves to run each other into the ground. That was pretty cool and allowed me to take my mind off my suffering if only for a moment. I was keeping pace pretty well at the start. Breathing was relatively easy and the ache in my left leg was dull and in the background. As we wound back up towards the start line, I shed my gloves and threw them at Chad who briefly wondered why someone tossed a manky pair of gloves at his feet before realizing that I'd just run past him on my way out of the park. The winds started to kick up as we ran to Frenchman's Bar. This was going to be interesting. I gelled up at mile six and then tucked my head down into the headwind as I started running back towards the start. The runners were all pretty strung out by that point so there was no one nearby to use as a windbreak. Second time by the finish at the 9 mile mark and I was mostly in the pain cave. The dull ache in my leg was becoming more and more known with each step and the rain started up again. By mile 11, it had had enough. Call it pride or just sheer stupidity, I did not step off the course when I passed the finish for the third time and suffered through the final 1.5 miles. I had dropped back to my training pace and toughed it over all the bumps through the park with my leg feeling worse each time the path canted even the tiniest bit uphill. But I finished. It was ugly. It was definitely not the best idea. But I gutted it out and ran a solid race despite the circumstances. And now? Now I rest and ice and rest some more. I'm back on the bike and in the pool come February and am severely cutting my run mileage just to get healthy again. It may be a self-imposed play year in triathlon but I still intend to race, not sit on the sidelines nursing an injury.