Today Was More About Delusional

Since Mother's Day (when I ran a 5K, with hills, and still got a significantly better time than before), I haven't had much opportunity to train. I spent a couple of days recovering from that overexertion and then had two multiple-day out-of-town events in between. I walked a lot, but no running, and not much else.

So when my neighbor asked if I would like to have his registration for a 5K that he couldn't go to, of course I said yes.

I set out with a goal to do better than I did two weeks ago. I didn't care if it was by one second, I just wanted to improve.

This was the first race/event I've been to completely by myself. My husband was exhausted from working all night (he got home about 6:00am) and because of the short notice, I didn't ask my dad to come and take care of my daughter--I just left her at home, hoping that when she got up she'd find her breakfast and the movie I left on rather than waking up her father immediately.

I got up and was disappointed to find no clean frying pans to cook with and no clean surface to cook on. So instead of scrambled eggs with shrimp, I had shrimp. Knowing this wouldn't be enough, I had a bowl of Cheerios and a little bit of juice. I gulped water en route to the race.

I'd looked up the race last night before bed and found very limited information about start location--it looked like whoever set up the web page never quite finished, as the start location was literally "at the intersection of and."

Thanks, that was helpful.

I only got lost once and then after finding it, had to loop through a full parking lot and then leave to go find another one. Amazingly, I parked right next to the starting line. I didn't even have too long of a wait, so weirdly I couldn't have timed it better.

I started out jogging along like last time and went through the same "I should have trained more/Why do I do this/I hate this/Keep going because you have goals set" conversation I had the last 5K.

Huh. Wonder why I can't remember that so well between races.

Anyway. There was a guy running/walking intervals near me. I think he had some kind of a heart monitor that he had set (or perhaps his doctor had set?) to go off if his heart rate got too high, because he would instantly stop jogging when it beeped. Then, it would do a slightly different beep and he would start jogging again (I assume it beeped to let him know his heart rate had dropped to a certain level).

I gotta look into getting a toy like that for me. It might actually help me improve more quickly than the overpush I tend to go into at a higher heart rate and might not be so traumatic on my body. Or I could just, you know, train more sensibly overall.

There was no water until the halfway point, and I was still feeling pretty good (considering I was running, anyway). Somewhere between 1.5 miles and 2 miles, my left foot started hurting. Since it did this on the last race, and I just ran through the discomfort (which ended up easing off), I figured I could do the same thing this time, so I kept going.

It kept getting worse.

And worse.

My foot started going from "sore" to tingly-numb. Then it spread to my little toes.

Convinced it would go away or that I could "work through it," I kept running.

Eventually the whole left side of my left foot and all of my toes were numb--and felt like they were twice the size of normal. I felt like I couldn't even control my big toe.

I pushed it about another 200 steps (I initially wrote "strides" but realized that would be a severe exaggeration) and foot pain aside, I was worried I might injure something else if I fell because I couldn't control my foot.

So I walked the last 1/4 of the race or so.

I kept wanting to start running again (okay, part of me not really), but my foot wasn't getting better even at the walking pace.

I started limping, just trying to keep going. I (briefly) entertained thoughts of giving up, but wasn't sure how I'd get back to my car.

It's sad the things that motivate me sometimes.

I was both pleased and disappointed to see my time when I got to the finish. 45:40. Pleased because I'd walked a fair bit of the race and had I been able to keep running, I'm pretty sure I would have beat my time from Mother's Day.

Disappointed because I didn't beat my time, I had to walk, this was a flat course on top of it, and my foot was still hurting.

Upon reflection, I think the following things contributed to my not having as successful race as I'd hoped:

1) Not enough training.

2) I may have pushed myself harder than I realized at the start/first half and possibly could have avoided all this with a more reasonable initial pace. However, since I didn't have a watch or any distance markers to go by, it's a little hard to tell.

3) I don't think I had enough of the right foods at breakfast. Dad thought I was nuts before my last triathlon requesting eggs and sausage, but it felt right. This one just didn't seem to be enough.

So all things I can fix if I plan ahead a little better.

In the meanwhile, I tried to take a nap, but my daughter was all wound up since she'd slept late and my husband had a doctor's appointment. In other words, life as usual. At least I have a clean living room today and can feel a little less guilty about lounging in it while my legs rest.