TC10k - Sunday April 25th, 2010

I posted this yesterday but I thought I would add this little preamble today. I have been struggling to find my hammer. Yes my hammer. My hammer is what I have when the runs get tough, earlier (in the morning) or or just down right ugly. I lost it probably sometime after being sick and having my Achilles injury. I had no real consistency in my training and I had no motivation to get out the door and hammer out some long runs. So I decided to get my hammer back, I went for a little run...

Well this would be the first race I've done in a real long time. It help put a lot of things in perspective for me. I knew I needed to race and I had to accept the likely suffering that would ensue. I had planned to just run 40 minute 10k and call it a day but after the start of the race, I thought why not see what the old body can do. Well being sick with some chest cold or something, and not having any sort of consistency in my training I think today was a bit of a rebirth for me.

I found the race was great and the pace wasn't anything unmanageable for me (3:35min/km); however, around km 4, things fell apart in a big way. I start feeling my chest cold and a nasty side stitch began to annoy me. I was feeling great (not pushing the pace) up until this point. I kept trying to fight it but the body was not having any of it. I got to the aid station, walked (ugh) and drank some water and began running again. The rest of the race was a disaster needless to say. I crossed the line in 35:59 and went straight to the medical tent to get checked out after I was feeling a quite light headed after the race. I got the opportunity to meet a good chunk of the Kenyan runners who destroyed the race in the tent and their coach Mike, also from Kenya which was amazing. After the race, I was definitely a little upset, but this is the fire I need.

I've scraped my race plans for the year and just gonna get back to the basics of why I run. Its gotta be fun and today proved it can be. For the first 4km I was having a blast, for the last 6km it was brutal. However mentally challenging and possibly detrimental to my health this race was, today I rediscovered why I love to run.