This is my 1st marathon of this year and 57th overall
I left my house at 2am in the morning and made a 4 hours drive to Boulder City, NV early Saturday morning. I arrived at the Lake Mead, NV a little after 6am, so I just missed to watch the 50 milers start, our marathon race starts at 8am. It was really cold in the morning, like in the 40's. I went to pick up my packet real quick and went back to my car and catch some last min sleep before the race starts.
Around 7:50am, race director Joyce made a quick annoucement about the course and everything, the course is an out and back course with many rolling hills, but the weather was perfect, not too cold and not too hot, compare this to Chicago Marathon and Las Vegas Marathon, this was perfect.
I started the race with a goal of finishing around 4:30, since I ran this race 2 years ago on my birthday with the time 4:51.55. I wanted to take it slow since my achilles tendon on my left foot was bothering me the past few days, but I was glad I was able to run on it without feeling too much pain, although I did felt the tightness while I was running, but it was manageable and I was able to run through it, at least for the first half of the race......................
After 15 miles, I felt my achilles tendon was starting to giving out on me, I could felt a sudden sharp pain right below my left calf, I had no choice but to start walking, and then after walking for a mile or two, I tried to start running again to see if the pain goes away, and it did!! But not for long, I was only able to run about a mile and then the pain came back again around mile 18, so I started to walk the rest of the race after that. It was kind of sucks watching other runners passed by me, but since this was a small event, there weren't a lot of runners on the course, sometimes I didnt even see any runner infront or behind me.
I tried a lot of positive thoughts to kept me moving, like trying to power walk and walk like Yolanda "The Walking Diva", trying to think I am running the Badwater 135 and I only have a few miles to walk till I finish, and I thought of those who walked thousands of miles across the US, so for me walking only 8 miles would be no big deal. I finally saw the finish line ahead of me, so I hopped as a horse as fast as I can and cross the finish line at 5:11.17. Not too shabby, consider only 41 mins after my goal time.
I hung out after the race for a few hours and waited for my other friends to finish their 50 miler, with Jeanette and Levi both finished under 10 hours, Jeanette being her 1st 50 miler, she actually won 1st place in her age group!! What a great accomplish for a rookie!! =-) We then waited for our other friend Jennifer, who finished just a little over 12 hours, afterward we all went to a sushi place and refueled.
Next Race........................... Rock N Roll Arizona, 1-17-2010
No comments:
Post a Comment