15K (9.321 miles) in 64:50 [or my first non-PR] January 27
On January 19th, I ran Florida Track Club’s Newnan’s Lake 15. The full results are online as well as pictures from Richard Ritari. I came in 20th (out of 167) overall, and 3rd in my age group. I should say I was really fourth in my age group but since my fellow 30-34 age grouper Ed Dunne won overall with an excellent 55:42 time, he is removed from the counting for age group awards.
This is the first time I did not get a personal record (PR) at a race. This is due to training mistakes on my part. Like many athletes, I have a hard time admitting when I am injured. I got a minor injury prior to my last big race (Micanopy half-marathon). I was pretty happy with Micanopy, but it greatly exacerbated my piriformis syndrome. I did take a lot of time off running after Micanopy. I was starting to feel a lot better, so I figured, why not race 9.3 miles. Turns out, that was a dumb idea. Here is a plot of my pace as a function of distance:
You may note that around 6 miles my pace starts to slip, and after 7 miles it really drops. At that point in time, I was thinking about walking because I was in some pain. Like many a foolish runner, I wasn’t brave enough to put my health before the embarrassment of not finishing a race. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to have caused major problems, but I definitely start to feel some discomfort when I get over 5 miles or so now.
Now, I’m doing everything I can to recover. You name it! Stretching, strength training, cross training on the bike, stairs, swimming, self massage, active release therapeutic massage, yoga, and even…. acupuncture. I’m looking for anything at this point: placebo effect, real effect, who cares: I’m just looking for effect. So far, things seem to be going well, but I’m definitely going to focus on shorter distance running until this heals up.
My current theory is that I’ve injured a ligament near the piriformis and also injured the sciatic nerve. Both ligament and nerve injuries just take time to heal, and clearly, I’ve not given them enough time yet. Like almost all runners (or even all athletes), it’s really hard for me to take it easy while I recover, but I try to tell myself that everything I do to heal is really part of my running. When I’m swimming, I’m running. When I’m stretching, I’m running. When I’m doing yoga, I’m running. All is one.
Two somewhat related notes. I got the data out of my garmin 305 using Garmintools, a free software package for interfacing with the Garmin 305. I recommend it if you run GNU/Linux and have a 305. Secondly, I did link to the photographer Richard Ritari’s site, but I can’t even view it properly because his site now uses flash to view simple pictures. I guess this is due to some quasi DRM-like idea of trying to make it hard to keep thumbnails of his images. I bought one image from him in the past, however, I doubt I would again. In the past, the digital download cost 40 dollars. It seems he is no longer even offering them, instead you must buy a 4×6 or 5×7. Just a note to photographers out there: it’s 2008, I’m not buying prints anymore. Charge me 10 dollars for the digital download (of pictures he has already taken and stored), and I will buy every picture he takes of me. In the mean time, he’ll be getting zero dollars from me.