Rock n Roll Half

This race was a roller coaster from the beginning.  It all started here.  From January to March, my training was better than expected.  I hit a snag in March.  I had a stress fracture.  March to May I didn't run.  I started back up in May and felt pretty good.  About 3 weeks before the race I fell off my bike.  This may or may not have been when I pulled a calf muscle.  I guess when and how it happened doesn't really matter, it happened.


Last Wednesday, 3 days before the race, I went for a run.  I made it half a mile before my calf started hurting.  I stopped and called my chiropractor and begged for an appointment that afternoon.  Thankfully she saw me, and after 10 painful minutes, I felt better.  


Thursday my sister and brother-in-law came in from Baltimore.  It was great to see them!!  Friday, Kelly and I headed into the city to get our packets at the expo.  The 20ish mile drive took over 90 minutes.  It SUCKED!!!  We finally got our packet and picked up some goodies at the expo.   I had a guy from KT Tape, tape up my calf.  He was clearly tired of doing it.  I looked back at one point had he was texting while taping me.  Needless to say, the tape lasted about an hour.  


We had a fabulous pre-race meal at Palace Kitchen.  Kelly and I both had the pan seared cod with spinach and peas.  It was ridiculously good.  I wish I had some now.

We woke up around 5 and were so happy it wasn't raining.  We got ready and walked to the start.  It was a nice warm up.

Here we are at the start.

It was downhill from here.  The first half mile was ok.  By mile 1 I was in pain.  It was deflating to know I wasn't going to do well and worse, the next 12.1 miles were going to hurt.  I did the best I could the next couple miles.  Kelly was kind enough to stay with me.  By mile 5, I was ready to quit.   The only reason I didn't was because I didn't know how.  Would I just walk the five miles back to the start?  I couldn't figure out what to do, so I kept going.  At mile 7 I stopped at a medical tent.  The doctor gave me a painful calf massage and some ridiculously strong Gatorade.  I felt a little better so I decided to keep going.

The "little better" feeling lasted until I started running.  I forced myself to keep going, although I debated if I was doing more harm than good.  Was finishing this race important enough to risk doing actual damage?  Was I doing actual damage?  I'm still not sure.   The race might not have been that important but I don't like to quit.  I didn't want to go home knowing I didn't finish what I started.  I didn't want to tell Pnut I quit because it hurt.  

So, I finished.  It was incredibly slow and I was close to tears a couple times.  Not just because of the pain, because this was not the race I wanted to have.  I was so angry that an injury was messing things up.  I felt like I had a good race in me.  It was really disappointing that it wasn't working out.

I'm still upset about it.  I've had my share of bad races and I know I'll get over this one.  I have no other races planned this year.  As much as I'd like to get back out there, to put this one behind me, I'm going to let my body heal.  I'm going to make sure I'm 100% before I race again.  

On the bright side...the medal is pretty cool.