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| [Post race --- I am a sweaty mess] |
With that in mind I was hoping to use this morning's 5k in Dewey as a fitness test. Though I am thrilled with my PR --- 28:28 minutes (9:09 min/mile) I am bummed that I wasn't 100%.
I foolishly wore a pair of shoes yesterday at work that tore up my left heel. Just call me a slave for fashion. As a result I've been hobbling around and even drove w/o my left shoe last night to the beach. Good thing my car's not a stick shift.
Anyway, I taped it up, added three heavy duty bandages to my heel and delicately jammed my foot into my running shoes this morning. As I limped to the starting line I already had decided to just see what happens. Worse scenario --- I stop and turn around or try and limp along.
I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it's as if I passed this pain threshold and was able to just focus on the task at hand. I just wanted to "do this" and didn't give a shit about the consequences.
I felt good out of the gate. I really felt confident out there. My first mile pace was in the 8-minute+ zone which is beyond stellar for me! I faltered a bit from mile 2.25 to 2.5-ish. I was hurting, hot (man was it humid and the sun was brutal) and scared I was going too fast so I slowed down. I swear...it's all mental for me because I still felt relatively strong. After seeing my time I'm bummed that I didn't keep up the intensity because if I had I would have broken the 9 min/mile mark. Oh well...just another goal.
Anyway, I just put my head down and continued to focus on passing people. Me...passing people! Hilarious! I had been passing people throughout the race and felt good that even toward the back-half of the race was passing people here and there. Go me --- Though having a group of 10-year olds sprint pass you didn't feel so good.
As I rounded the second to last corner I decided to turn the jets on full blast, open my stride and sprint hard to the finish line. It was a "wheels-coming-off-the-bus" feeling, but what did I have to lose --- other than tripping over my own feet and falling into a heap just shy of the finish line? Luckily that DIDN'T happen.
As soon as I caught my breath at the finish line I carefully removed my left shoe to reveal a painful mess. Nothing that some air, hydrogen peroxide and some neosporin can't cure...right? Anyway, I walked around w/o one shoe and caught up with the HipAHAs. Yay!!!! As of this evening I've got another blister courtesy of the run...but it does look "better" than this morning.
The great news --- I PR-ed!!!!!!
The good news --- I gutted it out. [You can do almost anything for 30 minutes, right?]
The bad news --- my heel is very angry with me.
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