I don't wanna talk about Sporting Life....

... but I will.


Honestly - I'm dissapointed in myself. I realize it's tacky to b*tch about the way you ran a race, but I'm seriously annoyed at myself right now. I totally choked. I did.

My race report:

Woke up at 5:30 this morning to get ready to run. Made myself a peanut butter & banana sandwich while I got ready, at 6am Toby & Sam picked me up and we headed off to pick up Ken & Vanessa. At 7am we had arrived at the starting line and proceeded to hang out for a bit, talking about how cold it was. Checked my bag and headed off to stand in the washroom line.

(a bunch of TMI stuff about my on-going gastro-intestinal stuff belongs here, but I'll save you the details...)

Anyways -- at the start of the race I was off --- I went strong until about the 6km mark - hitting my rhythm early on and maintaining a good pace of around 6 min/km. I was feeling pretty damn strong and sure of myself, and was incredibly proud of myself.

I should probably mention that I forgot my watch this morning. I was using the "stopwatch" feature on my ipod as some idea, but my ipod was in the zipper pocked of my running jacket, which was tied around my waste - so it was hardly a good timekeeper.

Anyways - it was at the 6.5km mark that I made a point of checking my time -- and it all sort of fell apart from there... I don't know what happened, if I was hitting my limit & getting tired, or if I just psyched myself out. Either way - I got slower. My pace slowed, my walk-breaks became more frequent. At the 8km mark I realized I had to push through, so I ran strong until about the 9km mark. At this point we were under the Gardiner, which is a little gross, so I walked a bit, and ran, and walked some more. I finished still running, paced in the chute for a bit before joining the huge bottleneck of runners.

5 minutes after I had finished, I realized I could definately keep running for another 5km, and that's when I realized I HADN'T run my best race. I totally could have gone harder, and I wish I had run like I did last year - to the point where I almost passed out and couldn't move another step at the finish line. But I didn't.


I finished in nearly the same time as last year - 1:08 (last year was 1:06). Mostly that time just annoys me.


Okay - so my recap.

- Out of this experience I've learned that I AM a stronger runner than I was last year. Even while I was "giving up" today it wasn't because my muscles were done, it was because my head was done cooperating with my body. I have to work on hill training more I think, and possibly some speedwork to improve my cardio-levels.

I've also learned the hard lesson that's going to kick me in the butt next time I face a run like this - because I'll have that finisher's medal hanging on my wall to remind me.

It's a great accomplishment to run 10k - not everyone can do that. But it's also a dissapointment to know that you could have run it better. A little bit of Yin & Yang for contemplation tonight.