Recovery

The official results of yesterday's race has been published. This has been my saddest result to date. I'm thankful that given the circumstances I could finish but... 35th of 37 runners in my age category and 50th of 53 runners among the women and 437th of 534 among the Twenty mile runners. At least I didn't finish last!

But look at these incredible top 10 times! Even at my best I wouldn't have been able to top these times!!

Anyhow, I think this race has served it's original intended purpose. It has given me my running mojo back. After a long time, I feel enthusiastic about running again (as I type this, my right knee is wrapped up with an ice packet but still) and I feel excited about the prospect of training again and to bring me back to my 2018 pace and strength.

For now of course, the focus is on recovery. I am completely sore all over from the run but the tendons around my right knee seem to have taken the worst beating. Being tendons, it will take a while to heal and restore so I'll have to be patient before returning to training. This one week is going to be completely off running. I will continue with some mobility and also maybe some swimming if possible. The week after I'll start on some strength work and maybe the week after that I'll check if running painless is a possibility. 

More updates soon.

Race Day!!!

Today started out in the worst way possible!. Knowing that we had an early start, I had set my alarm at 2:00 a.m. But owing to nerves and my cough that magically worsened last night, I was up way earlier anyways. Heard a commotion in the backyard and when I went to investigate, discovered that a pair of rogue stray dogs had attacked a stray cat and her kittens that I was feeding. I managed to shoo the culprits away but too late, all that was left was the mangled carcass of the sweet kitten. The mom cat and the other two kittens escaped unscathed. We had to have an unplanned burial at 1:00 in the morning. I’d only known the kitten for a month but that didn’t stop me from crying a bucketful. :( 

After that, my heart just wasn’t in it. I just went through the motions getting ready and warming up and quite heavy-heartedly headed to the venue.

The start line vibe was very electric. Lots of buzz and high energy. There were full marathon as well as twenty mile runners and the excitement and nerves were palpable. Some of it rubbed off on me and I tried to switch my thoughts away from the morning’s tragedy as I warmed up some more on the spot.

We were flagged off correctly at 4:00 and there were literally fireworks and flares to send us on our way. Right off the bat, my headphones refused to sync up, so the 5 hr playlist I had readied was for nothing. I had to resign myself to the constant chatter in my head for entertainment for the whole run.

12 minutes into the run, even though I had been running very easy at a 8’05”-8’15” pace, my knee started hurting. 12 minutes!!! It was so disheartening! Anyways I decided I would continue to run a mile at a time and see how long I could go on.

Instead of counting kms I was counting miles today since 20 is so much smaller compared to 32, mentally it makes such a difference. Every mile I would treat myself to a couple of gummy bears, congratulate myself and count down to the last mile. I stopped at every aid station and took many walking breaks but around the 16 km point (halfway) I realised I couldn’t do much more running because if I did, then walking would also have become out of the question. So then the walking breaks became longer and I was just throwing in 100, 200 meters of running whenever I could. I kept that up for another couple of miles after which I just could not run anymore. I got to the 20k mark at 3hrs and figured that If I could walk 1km in 10 minutes then I could finish the balance 12km in 120 minutes and make it before the cut-off time of 5hrs. (It turns out I was misinformed - twice!, later at the finishing area I discovered that there was no such cut-off time being enforced.)

So thats what I did. I kept walking quite briskly and tried to keep the pace under 10 minutes. It got increasingly difficult and every mile I finished I would tell myself only 5 miles to go, only 4 miles to go and so on. By 29km I was in a world of pain but I kept pressing on. It started raining at the 30k point which felt like a little relief and I attempted running again but I had to quickly stop coz it HURT! The final turn-off point to the finish line was at 31km. I suddenly noticed that I had about 8 minutes to the cut off time. If I needed to make it, I had to run. So I ran. Hurt like crazy, so stopped. Then about 200 meters to the finish line, I heard someone say it was 2 minutes to cut off time. If I walked it I wouldn’t make it. So I ran. It hurt. Hurt so bad I was crying. But I made it! 4:58:15. 1 min and 45 secs to spare.

It is insanity - but a strange kind of insanity that makes you put yourself through so much physical torture that once you accomplish what you’ve set out to do, the joy you reap from it is so immense that you keep coming back for more.

32km for little Luna Buna. May the little thing rest in peace! 

In less than 48 hours...

Following through with my resolve to stay positive about the upcoming race, I'm not going to talk about my knee, my ankle or how my last run on Monday went. In fact I'm not going to think about it at all. I'm going to line up at the start at the unthinkable hour of 3:30 a.m. on Saturday and give it my best shot. I'm going to enjoy the event, the atmosphere and the experience and not overthink the process. 

One of the rituals I enjoy doing before any race is arranging my gear and doing a "Flat-Lay". It is completely unnecessary but I like it! :) Two days from now all of this will be on me and that thought usually adds to the general sense of anticipation towards Race Day. Did you notice the watch? I updated my Garmin during this training cycle. 

The update wasn't essential since my Forerunner35 was functioning perfectly well even though it was looking slightly battered and the strap was held in place with an old hair tie but still I thought why not go up a level in the gadgets department since I'm aiming for a level up in the running distance department. The Forerunner35 (which has been discontinued now btw) was Garmin's starter level gps watch. Advertised as budget friendly, it was still a nifty ₹15,000 in comparison to some of the other starter level smart watches. I still think its a great watch for a runner like me. It had all the basic features I needed, it wasn't the nicest looking watch out there but it served the purpose, really well. 

I upgraded to the Forerunner255 - which is a few levels up I believe - and to be honest, it has way too many features and I'll probably never end up using half of them. Having said that, it is really, really cool and all of the features that I have used and explored on it have not been disappointing. But easily the best new feature is the music. The watch can store music and also be linked up to music apps (I have my amazon music on it) so with a pair of bluetooth headphones you're good to go! I don't have to carry my phone separately in order to have music on the run. So far, I've not had any regrets with the purchase and oh it looks much better too.

For Race Day I've loaded up 5 hours worth of songs so at least on the music front I know I'm good to go! 

I've been looking at the course map the past few days. I know the roads and landmarks along this route (up until a point at least) so I've been trying to visualize me running through this course on Race Day. 32 Kilometres! A 32 Kilometres drive sounds like a bit much and I'm supposed to be running it!? When I think about it, I actually question my sanity.

Well heres wishing me luck!!