There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things…
And once in a great while, going about it the wrong way
will get you where you want to go.
But…
There will be consequences.
The Piper will have to be paid.
I knew that going into the Top of Utah Marathon this
year.
My longest run since June was 13.1 miles and I knew there
was a pretty good chance—almost guaranteed—that the second half of TOU would be
difficult and painful.
And what do you know.
The week following the Spanish Fork Half, I ran all of 4
miles hoping to recover as best I could from that race and save as much energy
as possible for TOU. However, my 4 mile
run ended up being about 30 seconds per mile faster than I wanted, and Friday
found me with tired legs. I was anxious
enough as it was—you don’t jump back into running after a potential stress
related injury by running 13 miles one week and 26.2 the next. There’s supposed to be a gradual build up of
the miles, right?
But nobody has made a legitimate argument in favor of my
intelligence, so…
Nobody has really argued in favor of my rugged good looks
either, but still.
I spent Friday night with my daughter (a student at USU)
and actually managed to get a good 4 hours of sleep—a rarity for me the night
before a race. Saturday morning she took
me to the busses. I forgot and left my “breakfast”
in the trunk of the car. Fortunately,
some kind soul offered me half of her pop tart supply and I stumbled across a
banana that was about to be tossed about 20 minutes before the start of the
race. There’s nothing like starting a
race on an empty stomach and I’m glad I was able to dodge that bullet.
About 6 of the first 13 miles were sub-9 and only 2 were
on the plus side of 10 (courtesy of bathroom stops). I was feeling pretty good about that, but
they all felt slow. Really slow. It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the
actual splits that I realized I actually fared pretty well.
At 14 I was supposed to meet Smooth, but because of a bit
of a mix up we ended up connecting between miles 16 and 17. From there on in to the finish I was
pleasantly entertained, encouraged, and motivated by Smooth. What ended up being about a 2:10 second half
could very well have been 3:00. My quads
and calves were tired and sore. Each
step sent a wave of a pain through my legs—it was almost as if the muscle in my
legs had turned to glass and each time a foot would come down that glass was
going to break. There were quite a few
times I had to walk and while Smooth allowed me that, she was quick to get me
running again.
As we approached the finish line, Smooth broke off to
meet her family and I never got the chance to thank her properly. I owe her, at the very least, one big hug!
Finished in 4:15:57.
Went and crashed at my daughter’s and then took in the first, and
apparently the best, half of the Aggies football game before heading home.
The next couple of weeks will be spent trying to recover and rest up the
legs enough that I can pull another sub-4:00 race out of St. George.
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