Year 2, Week 17 Wrapup

I was planning to race this week, so I was going to taper this week anyway. But, I ran on Monday and then got sick the next day, so Monday was the only running I did before the race.

I had been doing speedwork the last six weeks in an effort to set a new 5k PR of 22:30. With me getting sick this week, I thought it wouldn't be possible. But, on Saturday I was feeling a little better, so I drove up to Kiwanis Park in Tempe for the Care for Life 5k. It has something to do with raising money for African children.

It was a fairly small race, so when it started, I decided to take the lead for a bit, just because no one else seemed like they wanted to, and it seemed like fun, if only for 10 seconds. After about 10 seconds of easily staying in the lead, and about 20 seconds of struggling to keep it, I backed off to what should have been my normal pace.

I was maintaining a 7:15 pace, but really hating it about halfway through, and could really feel my body being drained from being sick for so long. After about 2 miles, I just thought, "No. I'm sick. I'm not going to make my goal. I shouldn't kill myself trying when I could just go home, recover, and make a better effort in a couple of weeks." And just like that I stopped and started walking. After about 10 seconds of walking, though, I saw the dude in front of me make a wrong turn. I thought I better at least get ahead of him before he figures out what happened, that way I can at least finish one place higher. And then, I took off running again.

I finally finished in 22:39, just 9 seconds short of my goal. If I hadn't started walking, I might have finished closer to my goal, or I might have finished slower since I would have been more drained. There's just no telling. I was close enough to my goal, though, to still be proud about it, especially since I was so sick. The crappy part is if I had just skipped this race and waited a couple of weeks, I maybe could have done 22:20 or something.

I was 8th out of 59. I didn't get an award, but I kind of feel cheated about it. First of all, the paper registration form said awards would be done in 5 year brackets. However, when I got there, I found out they were doing 10 year brackets. Then, they didn't pull the overall winners out of the brackets. There's no rule or anything that says they have to, but it's common enough that I would expect it. So, the first place winner was 38, and the second place winner was 31. If you pulled out the first place winner, and did five year brackets so that the second place guy was in a different bracket from me, then I would have got an award. I stuck around for the raffle afterwards and was hosed there, too.

The real bad news is that my right knee is totally hosed now. It hurt after the race Saturday and still hurts Sunday. There's a lot of pain right behind the kneecap, and it hurts especially when I go down stairs, or kneel down, or move it after it sits still for a while. I'm going to take a few days off next week and see if it gets any better.