On Saturday I ran a half marathon at the Redmond Watershed on a course I’ve ran before. I’ve been working with my running coach and I felt like I had been making some big improvements over the past couple of months. Being a course I’ve ran several times, this seemed like a good way to test myself. Challenging my PR from pre-transition would be a hard but reachable goal I felt with all the work I’d been putting in, but at least I would be faster than when I ran it after I started transition. Instead I came out, and was 6 minutes off my time from the fall.
My Race
The course is two 6.5(ish) mile laps. The trails are mostly wide without too much twisting that a lot of the other trails I run can be. There’s not much elevation gain, only about 860 feet according to my watch. This is the type of trail that’s easy to just cruise on. I started out cruising along, going for my usual half marathon strategy of just giving a light push on the run, being what I can usually sustain. Everything felt fine for the first 5 or so miles.
Then I hit the big(ish) climb. It’s only about 100 feet spread out over half a mile, nothing too serious compared to my other runs. But even though I was saving energy and focusing on not pushing hills, everything just gave out. When I got up that hill, it was like my body just didn’t want to run anymore.
I finished that first lap hoping that it would just be a temporary feeling, but it stuck around with me. My neck started hurting, I started feeling sick to my stomach, and I just wanted to cry. And cry I did once I finished and found a spot to sit down. I just felt terrible.
What Happened?
The week leading up to the race was emotional. Work is overwhelming right now and I feel like it’s a struggle to keep up (and this is part of the reason I haven’t been writing, I just want to zone out after work). One of my kids has been going through a phase and there’s a lot more screaming for the moment. The other one got a serious injury and had to go to the hospital. There are projects and cleaning to do around the house and I’m having to deal with my annual fight against the ants coming through the sliding door. I had my hopes up that I could push myself on this race.
In all, I think it was just too much stress going on to be able to run a good race. Looking at my heart rate, it was all normal the first mile or two, but the first sustained smaller hill I hit around mile 2, my heart rate spiked up above where I normally run a half marathon and didn’t really come back down. I was too ramped up to run well.
But that’s okay
And this is where I’ve struggled in the past, and that’s why I want to write this piece. It’s okay that I had a bad race. My coach, Steph Mundt, is right that this was not a reflection of my fitness, sometimes we have crappy days. I have had so many great runs recently, including an amazing 10 mile race at Lord Hill with twice the elevation gain! In the past, I’ve been conditioned to feeling like a failure if anything was less than my “best effort”. But we have these times where things just suck, and I need to accept that.
So as silly as it is to write, it is okay that I had a bad run.
