What an amazing day! About 12 hours since my run this morning & I'm still riding my runner's high! :-)
The Cool Runners event came back this Feb after a year's break. Its a small event and in the past, I have found it to be well organized and a very pleasant event. The last time I ran the event, I had run in the 10K category but this year I opted for the 21.1K distance. Considering the facts that it was a double loop HM and that I have another HM coming up in 3 weeks time, I was in half a mind to switch my category to a 10K. I am so glad that I didn't.
Early mornings are still very pleasant here in the City so it made for great run weather today. The run started early at 5:00 am. I had a target time of 2:20 in my head as I started out. (Given that the whole of last year I spent in bettering my 10K time, I thought this was a very doable target) I had divided the run into 7 segments of 3K and each segment I was to complete in 20 minutes. I found myself finishing each segment well in time and up until 18K, I was spot on target. In fact it looked like I might have made it in under 2:20.... But somewhere in that last three kilometers, I found myself fading. The feet & ankles were aching (could be because I wasn't in my favourite on shoes) I could feel the muscle soreness developing and it seemed tougher and tougher to push myself. I took a short 500 meter walking break at 19.5 and willed myself to continue running to the finish.
About 300 meters to the finish line I met a couple of run buddies from the Nitros and they very sweetly ran with me till the finish line shouting encouragement and pushing me on. 2:21:35 was my finish time. It was an incredibly awesome feeling! I had just beaten my PB by 12 minutes!! But even more incredibly, as I finished, the timing organizers came up to me, noted my bib number and asked me to stick around for the prize distribution since they felt I had a podium finish. And surprise! surprise! when the prize distribution came around, it turns out that I came first in my age / gender category of 16 - 45 women and 2nd among all the women. (I discovered later that there were only 16 women who participated in the HM category). All in all, a fantastic run that ended in an absolute high!
My next run is three weeks from now. Hoping to better this timing and push for another PB... :)
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