Kerry's Running Blog

Still huffing and puffing at a painfully slow pace, but it doesn't hurt and I'm only coughing a bit at the end (this cold has seemed to drag on long after I thought I was done with it). With the change to daylight savings time, I'm back to running in the dark. I found I only needed my headlamp when I ran along the east side of the pond and later along the creek path (there are patches of unmelted snow and ice along both sections). Average pace was 9:15. Temperature 29 with 70 RH. No wind under mostly clear skies.

As I was getting dressed this morning to head out, I stopped to reconsider as my head and lungs were quite congested. I can't seem to quite get rid of this bug. I decided that I'd probably be better off skipping a day than trying to push through it again.

After a couple of days off due to resurgence of my cough, to sinus headaches and a general lack of sleep, it was nice to get out this morning. I mark my mileage as easy miles due to my slow pace, but they really didn't feel that easy this morning. I've had ongoing bowel issues and this morning my nose was running faster than I was, but I it still felt great to be running. I think my pace will pick up quite a bit when my lungs clear and my red cell count is back up, just because I've been trying to push it. I'm going to try to recruit some of my neighbors to start running with me at least one of two days a week.

At the start: temperature 35.7, RH 57, heavy overcast, no wind.

Paul predicted that this race would help me get moving in the right direction again. I had pretty low expectations going into this race as I've been battling one cold after another for the last six weeks or so. That coupled with very little training over the winter (I averaged well under 20 miles a week from November on and hadn't run more than six miles at a time since then), didn't give me much hope for a good time. 

We met Carrie and Kiya on the bus ride up and had a nice visit with them and met Nathan, Wayne and Larry as we were standing around trying to stay warm at the start. My strategy was to hang back at the start and see how I was feeling and then push it harder at the end if I was feeling OK. I wasn't expecting much as it was a struggle to run a 9:15 pace earlier in the week.

With the nice downhill start I started out at a comfortable pace and then picked it  up a bit as I still felt good after a half mile or so. I was surprised to find that I'd run the first mile in 6:42 and wasn't even breathing hard. At a mile and a half there was about a 100 feet of elevation  gain to the two mile marker and my pace slowed to 7:44. With the rolling net downhill of the next mile I dropped to 7:32 before my lack of training started to really catch up to me. I slogged through the next miles with splits of 8:01, 8:34 and 8:33. I still had enough juice at the end however to drop below seven minute pace for the last quarter mile.

The weather, course and people at the race were just fantastic. We just had a great weekend. For the first race since the marathon I was happy to find that my legs could still move at 6:30 pace at times and that I still had a little strength and endurance left over. I was really happy that I wasn't bothered with the PF in my right foot either during the race or afterwards. I'm now looking forward to starting to build up mileage again.

Congratulations to Paul, Nathan, Kiya and the others on their trophies and to Carrie on a new PR!