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Oct. 13th, 2012 08:02 pmLast night, I had a dream that I slept through my race. In the dream, I was sure I must have been dreaming, because I would never oversleep, but all the little in-dream tests I did to see if I was actually dreaming came up negative...then, in the same dream, I actually did wake up from the dream, relieved it had been a dream after all, only to realize that I had STILL overslept. How meta. Then I ACTUALLY woke up and it was 6am and I had plenty of time and nervous energy to kill before the 10K.
This race was not great. The weather wasn't as bad as it could have been -- conditions were wet and parts of the trail were soggy, but I was properly dressed and therefore not uncomfortable. However. The course sucked. It was in a park, and had lots of twists and turns, marked only by chalk arrows -- no volunteers on the course to direct folks. The problem with that is that the rain had washed away most of the arrows. There were also very few people doing the 10K course (300 in the 5K, 20 in the 10), so it's not like I had a pack of people I could just follow. There was a couple about 100 yards ahead of me, and if I hadn't seen them turn, I would've missed the first several turns of the course, so for the first part of the race, I really overexerted myself to keep up with them just so I wouldn't get lost. But eventually I had to give up on that -- I was losing ground and there was still a lot more race to go. I followed the arrows and luckily stayed on course, but that was very stressful. It was not well marked at all, and there were a few intersections where I had to stop and scan the ground for signs of an arrow. That was annoying. The other annoying part is that the course curved to within feet of the finish line not once but twice -- and there were no mile markers, so both times I thought it was plausible that I was done, only to have quite a bit more running to do. That is a psychological killer. My pace dropped off severely after that. I had been in front of a small, sort of spread out pack of people for the first 4ish miles, and they all passed me in the last 2 miles. My final time wasn't bad, but I felt shitty. It just wasn't a good run, and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't even have much of a sense of accomplishment at the end because I felt so crappy. All I was thinking was "how am I ever going to run TWICE this far?" But that was just the bad energy taking over. I know I can do better. My half is a little less than six months away, and a lot can happen in six months. I remember when a 5K seemed like an impossible task, and that wasn't very long ago. Just gotta stick with it.
My plan was to go do some cider pressing with friends after the race, but I felt so exhausted and crappy that I came home and fell right into bed. When I woke up, I had a killer headache, so I just lazed around the house all afternoon waiting for that to run its course. Then around 6pm, I finally felt well enough to get up and get some shit done. Kelly gets here tonight, so the first priority was to make a guest room livable for her. I put up curtains, put together the desk that was in there but disassembled, bedified the futon, made the bed, and moved all the excess stuff to the other guest room, which will be known for the foreseeable future as "the staging area." I don't have a lot on the schedule for tomorrow, just a WW training session in the mid-afternoon, so I'll probably take Kelly around a bit and maybe even get a little bit more done in the house. Z gets home in the evening and then we leave for Olympia on Monday morning, so anything that doesn't get done tomorrow will probably wait at least another week. There's really not too much, though. For now my mission is just to stay awake until Kelly arrives (eta: 90 min), and I'm honestly not sure I can do it...
This race was not great. The weather wasn't as bad as it could have been -- conditions were wet and parts of the trail were soggy, but I was properly dressed and therefore not uncomfortable. However. The course sucked. It was in a park, and had lots of twists and turns, marked only by chalk arrows -- no volunteers on the course to direct folks. The problem with that is that the rain had washed away most of the arrows. There were also very few people doing the 10K course (300 in the 5K, 20 in the 10), so it's not like I had a pack of people I could just follow. There was a couple about 100 yards ahead of me, and if I hadn't seen them turn, I would've missed the first several turns of the course, so for the first part of the race, I really overexerted myself to keep up with them just so I wouldn't get lost. But eventually I had to give up on that -- I was losing ground and there was still a lot more race to go. I followed the arrows and luckily stayed on course, but that was very stressful. It was not well marked at all, and there were a few intersections where I had to stop and scan the ground for signs of an arrow. That was annoying. The other annoying part is that the course curved to within feet of the finish line not once but twice -- and there were no mile markers, so both times I thought it was plausible that I was done, only to have quite a bit more running to do. That is a psychological killer. My pace dropped off severely after that. I had been in front of a small, sort of spread out pack of people for the first 4ish miles, and they all passed me in the last 2 miles. My final time wasn't bad, but I felt shitty. It just wasn't a good run, and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't even have much of a sense of accomplishment at the end because I felt so crappy. All I was thinking was "how am I ever going to run TWICE this far?" But that was just the bad energy taking over. I know I can do better. My half is a little less than six months away, and a lot can happen in six months. I remember when a 5K seemed like an impossible task, and that wasn't very long ago. Just gotta stick with it.
My plan was to go do some cider pressing with friends after the race, but I felt so exhausted and crappy that I came home and fell right into bed. When I woke up, I had a killer headache, so I just lazed around the house all afternoon waiting for that to run its course. Then around 6pm, I finally felt well enough to get up and get some shit done. Kelly gets here tonight, so the first priority was to make a guest room livable for her. I put up curtains, put together the desk that was in there but disassembled, bedified the futon, made the bed, and moved all the excess stuff to the other guest room, which will be known for the foreseeable future as "the staging area." I don't have a lot on the schedule for tomorrow, just a WW training session in the mid-afternoon, so I'll probably take Kelly around a bit and maybe even get a little bit more done in the house. Z gets home in the evening and then we leave for Olympia on Monday morning, so anything that doesn't get done tomorrow will probably wait at least another week. There's really not too much, though. For now my mission is just to stay awake until Kelly arrives (eta: 90 min), and I'm honestly not sure I can do it...
