Background: Today I should have been running the Newport Half Marathon as a tune-up for my first marathon (Philadelphia), but because I am dumb and clumsy I broke my big toe at a concert at the end of June. I tried to hold out hope that maybe the break wasn't that bad and I'd be able to do an abbreviated marathon training plan, but follow-up X-rays at 4 weeks showed that while the toe was healing well, it was still going to be a while before I'd be running again. I spent a bazillion long hours deep water running in the pool; combined with the death of my favorite cat and my thesis defense date getting pushed back yet again, this was the hardest, most frustrating summer of my life.

Training: 8+ weeks of pool running from July 1st onward: 8.5-9.5 hours of volume per week with a 2.5 hour long "run"; once I could stand without pain, I hit the weight room pretty hard so that all my tears and ice cream and pizza and beer would go toward building some muscle - 3x/week, squatting every session, alternating bench and overhead press, some accessory work. Started jogging a few minutes at a time at the end of August, got back to normal frequency pretty quickly, still working on approaching normal mileage (40+; ideally I'd like to get to 50 and keep my base there for a while). Last 4 weeks have each had one workout-type run: a super-short track workout with my club, a 1 mile time trial, a slightly longer track workout (~2.25 miles of fast stuff) and a 2x1.5 mile tempo run. Otherwise all easy; there was one run with a couple of approaching-MP miles and a couple others with a few strides sprinkled in when I was feeling good. This was uncertain territory for me - running a race to see where my fitness was versus training hard and crushing a goal. My workouts indicated that I was maybe in better shape than I thought, but I had run so few miles recently. I'd also gained some weight and thought that would slow me way down, but by some miracle I was actually fairly close to my spring race weight by the end of this week.

The race: This one is near and dear to me, it's my running club's major fundraising event for the Ronald McDonald House of Providence. The House is right across the street from a couple of major local hospitals and its mission is to give families a safe and affordable place to stay (or free, if they can't afford the $10/night fee) when their children are hospitalized. This year we were able to raise $52,800 for the House - pretty nifty! The whole thing is organized and run by the club, I've actually been awake since 4:45 this morning so I could spend the ~4 hours prior to warmup/race time helping get everything set up and ready to go, so if I stop making sense at some point that would be why.

The course is nice, USATF certified, flat and fast and on streets I've run countless times before.

Quick change into the race shirt I brought with my bib already pinned to it, warmup time! When I looked at my watch and saw 8:52 for the second "easy" mile I figured this race was either going to be awesome or a horrific crash-and-burn. Switched into my racing flats (aw yeah, so cool!), ran some strides and did a few dynamic warmup type moves, lined up near the front with about 7 minutes to spare before the gun. So nervous! So excited!

Mile 1: Started off WAYYYY too fast. Like hilariously fast. But not as fast as the woman in sparkly shorts who sprinted off the line and fell back panting about a tenth of a mile in, so that was something. I found myself hanging with a group of high school cross country girls when things thinned out a bit - DANGER! TROUBLE! I should not be as fast as these girls! It was maybe 0.25 miles in, my watch was reading 6:25, so I backed off in increments until I hit that familiar comfortably-uncomfortable 5K feeling and hung there. Picked a couple people way up ahead to keep my eye on and just ran strong. Through mile 1 in 7:13.

Beginning of mile 2 gave me a bit of a panic - watch started off reading something like 8:15 and I was like "oohhhh no. This is bad. Started way too fast, no hope for a PR!" Picked it up a little, started finding targets to hang with and then targets to pass. Tried like hell not to think about how much longer I had to keep moving. Mile 2 has a couple of 90 degree turns that don't help the momentum at all. On to the next one in 7:30, ouch. PR was feeling questionable at that point. This whole mile was a mental battle with me questioning what I was even doing here after the last few months I've had.

I frankly don't know what happened but mile 3 felt better than it had any right to. I mean, there's always that *oh shit I hope I don't puke* feeling, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be in mile 2. By some miracle I passed a couple people that I didn't think I had any hope of catching (one a runner from my club who's always been faster than me!) and cracked a joke that no one laughed at - this seems to be my racing trademark. I'll be here all week, folks! Mile 3 has two veeeery tiny gentle inclines that can feel like mountains at 5K effort, but I powered up those bad larries and dropped a couple more people on the way. Up one more hill to the entrance to the stadium to finish on the track - I didn't look at my watch when it beeped, split was 7:21.

On the track I found another gear to my kick and let it out - saw the timer at 22:31 and realized I COULD PR AFTER ALL GODDAMNIT!! Put my head down and killed that last 100m, split for 0.11 was 0:34 but that included the 3 seconds it took me in the chute to stop moving my legs and get my arm over to the stop button on my watch.

Official time 22:40.55, 13 second PR and good for 5th AG 20-29 - lucky for me, we give age group prizes 5 deep and the top 5 overall win cash and aren't eligible for AG awards! I ended up with a Coach wristlet for my efforts today and a sweet ass cow painting for my kitchen from the bib number raffle. 31 overall out of 305 runners; no gender placement, obviously, as it's all women.

All in all a solid race, I'll be hunting down that sub-22 by the end of the year!

Congrats on the PR and the AG award!  I read that too fast and thought you got a painting of a cow's ass...

Wow, that's fantastic!  Congratulations!  I can't believe how well you kept up (improved!) your fitness while injured.

5k's can be tough, you were up to the task though. Sometimes the second mile is a breather, nice job righting yourself for a strong third mile.

 

What's a Coach's wristlet?

DUDE.

What a great last mile.  Congrats on the PR and 5th place finish.

Way to go on the PR! Nice AG award too.

WTG!

Welcome back!