Sometimes you wonder why things
unravel the way they do. After any race, the immediate dissection begins, just
to find an excuse for why things didn’t go the way you planned.
But first, hats off to Garima.
She didn’t have an ideal day either and still managed a PR of 1:49 for her
official time! Her cheerfulness always amazes me. Great job, partner! I’m so
proud of you!
My time was 3:10. My goal was
2:59. Needless to say, a spectacular fail! LOL. Unlike the horrible calf cramps
of last year that took the blame for my 3:09 in 2012, no single blatantly
obvious excuse stands out to me this year.
Well…except the fact that both
Garima and I caught some stomach bug sometime this week (either the pool, or
some food, who knows…) and we visited the loo 5 times EACH in the 18 hours
preceding the race. Our tummies hurt from being so empty. Of course, that means
dehydration. And total stomach shutdown during the race, refusal to accept any
calories and/or hydration (We saw this coming, see yesterday's post.)
Parichit’s Race:
With that mentioned, I should’ve
known better at the start, but I just kept my thoughts to myself and kept
optimistic.
I felt off right from the start,
and knew I had to revise my goals, that’s probably the only wise thing we both did
during the race….as that prevented an epic blowup two-thirds of the way
through.
I tried to stick to the 3:05 pace
bunny, but that only lasted till 30 kms. But even between 22-30 kms, I was
struggling at 4:30-4:40 min/km pace. I knew if I had to beat my time from last
year, I just needed to do this pace till the end instead of trying to speed up
till I exploded. This revised my goal to 3:09. So I tried, and there was a lot
of HTFU involved in getting the most out of my legs on this day. But its hard
when your liver is empty and you can’t take in any calories.
Simple truth: Diapraghm pain = cardiovascular
system is limiting. Duh. The legs just weren’t there, so the pace drove my HR
up 10 BPM right from the start. I’m used to a HR of 155-158 BPM at 4:15 min/km
pace but today I was always at 166 BPM.
So like I said, you just HTFU and bide
time until that catches up to you and bites you in the ass. That happened at 39
km. 5:10 pace, diaphragm hurting, but not my legs. It was now a battle of
attrition and will.
Everything went into just trying to come under the 3:09:44
that I did last year. Missed by 30 seconds. Drats. Crawled home at 4:40 min/km pace. That's usually my "I'm too lazy to run"/ Zone 1 recovery pace (130-140 BPM) but today, it was all I could muster at the end.
Strangely, I placed better in
ranking this year and it seemed everyone was slower. Hmmm. I came 74th
overall, and 12 in the M25-29 age group. Only 25 people broke the 3:00 barrier.
A half downhill course sounds easy, but its not.
Garima’s Race:
This being my first half
marathon, I wasn’t sure what my goal time should be. But I wanted to set a goal
instead of just finishing the race. So
Parichit set one for me: 1hr 45m! To give you a little background, this time
last year I couldn’t even run for 5 km thanks to my shin splints (which turned
out to be compartment syndrome…but that another story for another day). I used
to run 10 km/hr pace by summer last year in my races and didn’t really run over
15 km. So a 12 km/hr pace was a huge goal for me and I wanted to put in every
effort to meet it.
So… as Parichit mentioned above,
lady luck wasn’t with us and we ended up with some stomach flu the day before
the race. Oh man, what a pain in the butt (no wait…pain in the stomach). We
managed the pre race with brave smiles telling ourselves it will be fine by
tomorrow. I went to see off Parichit at his start time (an hour before me)..wished
him luck and hoped to god our stomachs don’t act up.
An hour later…my race begins...the
first 2 km are going alright (except for the fact that my shorts kept falling down lol)…and then pain in the diaphragm...I’m tensed
thinking I have another 19km to go. But I was determined to try to maintain my
5 min/km pace. Drank some water...big mistake… the stitches came back, tummy
hurt and it felt like I was doing situps with every step. But luckily things
got better in the next few kms, and I was keeping goal pace till 15 km.
That’s
when the pain came back and I just wanted to stop and walk. I was getting
slower by the km….by 17 km I changed my goal = FINISH THE RACE! Lol. I had
never wanted to to just stop and walk so bad ever in my life. The best part was
my legs were fine but my stomach was giving up, making my body shudder. The only
thing that kept me running and searching for the next km marker was...shame! I
wanted to run the whole race and be able to say so.
So like searching for oasis
in a desert, I looked for the next km marker, then next and on & on till we
reached 20km. Alright, I said to myself: Time to look like a runner…! I picked
up some speed, and forgot about the past 20 km. Seeing the finish line had
never felt so good. And there I was, crossing the finish at 1hr 49 min and
immediately feeling better.
Soo... in conclusion, inspite of the
pain and suffering, it was a great feeling to do my first half marathon under
1:50 (I couldn’t dream of it last year!). I came 909 overall, 80th in
my age group (not so bad after all! Okay….its not like I came first…but I am
proud of us both, nevertheless). Yes, things went downhill (hehehe sense the
pun???) but on the bright side, my next goal wouldn’t be as hard as beating
1:45 which means I may actually live through another half marathon if insanity took
over and I registered for one!
PS: I give credit to Parichit for
helping me train and actually making me believe that I could do this!
No pain, no gain!
Post Race:
We both saw Pulkit right before
the finish! Yay! Thanks for coming, Pulkit. It feels good to have some support
and for someone to actually see what we do on a nearly daily basis and for us
to get back some visual feedback.
My diaphragm is sore. Here’s the funny part, post-race:
my legs are fine. Like they just did another random training run! Quads are
also a bit sore, but that’s expected. BUT, as soon as I stopped, I couldn’t move my left
shoulder. Yup. Ran 42 kms and the thing that hurts the most is my shoulder. WTF.
Goddamn work ergonomics.
Now that I figured out my calf heart attack issues
(hopefully) from last year, this shoulder/neck pain took its place in 2013. I
literally had to hold my left arm and couldn’t lift it or put any sort of
weight on it for like 1 hour.
The culprit is primarily
dehydration, but it’s just bringing out my underlying shoulder trigger points
and tendonitis from poor work desk posture and well, sitting at a desk for 7-9
hours/day.
Anyway, we all walked part-way
and took a cab on the way home to get refreshed. Then had our usual post-race
feast of eggs, bacon, ham, sausages and peanut butter toast! W00t! After
rejecting food for the last 4 hours, my tummy still didn’t feel hungry.
Had a good talk with Pulkit over
brunch on a lot of random stuff, after which I saw him off as he headed back to
the airport to continue his journey back home to New Delhi. Sucks. Wish he
could’ve stayed longer.
Now I’m hanging out on a patio at
a local Starbucks enjoying the sun and walking around just fine. This random
woman sitting next to me looked at my race shirt from today and exclaimed:
Woman: “You did the marathon
today?! Shouldn’t you be like…lying on a couch with bags of ice or something?!”
Me: “Nah! It’s a nice day, we’re
just walking around and enjoying the sun.”
Woman (clearly impressed): “Wow,
you guys are amazing!”
...And here I was feeling sorry
for a 3:10 marathon and not meeting my 3:00 goal. Perspective, eh?
Keep pedaling.
.
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