Race Results and a Week of Injury Recovery

I didn't quite hit my 20 minute target for the 5K on Saturday (my time was 20:56), but I was the overall female winner.  That's never happened before, in part because one of the local runners in my area is an ex-college athlete who regularly hits a 6:30 pace across MARATHON distances.  Naturally, she can go a lot faster than that for a 5K.

I achieved two of my goals, and I'm going to work on all of them again at a 4.5 mile race this weekend. I wanted to keep every mile under a 7-minute-mile pace, to practice leaning into the hills, and to "empty the tank." The first two were fine: I had been nervous about the downhill start, because I tend to brake myself during downhills, but the energy of the race helped me use it to my advantage.

Emptying the tank is hard, though. I have never finished a race thinking, "That was all I have," and this was no exception. Maybe the 5K distance makes that very difficult, but at the same time, I think I could have picked up my pace during the final mile.  It was psychologically difficult for me to do that, though, once I realized I was the first woman.  I know I need to dig into myself for motivation and to run my own race, but it's really challenging for me to push myself past self-created limits when there's not someone pulling me along.

I felt fine after the race, but the next night, I experienced horrible pain in my heel/achilles tendon. I've been dealing with inflammation and pain there for months, but on Sunday it was debilitating. I even had a dream about it.

Now, I'm spending the week trying to recover form the injury by icing it, taking anti-inflammatories, and getting a massage. I'm going back and forth about whether or not I need an x-ray.  It seems more like a tendon issue, but I don't want to make any mistakes and wind up needing to take months off from running.

How do others stay injury-free, and how do you respond to some of the nagging aches and pains that could turn into injuries?

Finishing the Fall 50

On Saturday, I finished the Fall 50 as a member of a 5-person relay team.  Our group brought two teams paired approximately by pace so that we could all run our segments with a partner.  I ran one leg with my boyfriend (who could not, incidentally, "kill the hill" at the end of our leg--even though he's naturally a slightly faster runner than me, I wound up waiting for him at the top) and the other with Liz.  

Liz just recovered from an injury that involved a few months off from running, and she was nervous about joining our team again.  We met last year when Matt was injured--Liz became my default partner, and I was absolutely terrified about running with her: she has a high school and college track background, plus tons of age-group awards and fast races under her belt, and at that point, all I had accomplished since having my daughter 4 years earlier was bonking during one half marathon and finishing another. We ended up being an amazing team: we pushed each other and managed to run at a 7:45 pace across two of the hilliest legs of the route last year.  This year, despite her injury, we got our pace down to 7:25 for a challenging 4.1 mile leg.  Running with Liz, and talking to her about training, has given me much more focus and determination about training than I had before.  Where I used to measure my success by miles logged, now I find myself thinking of new ways to push my boundaries and challenge  myself.

Being able to pass at least eight people during our leg while running in tutus was pretty awesome.  I definitely had a girl power kind of race as I thought about how many people probably saw our outfits and thought we'd be too "girly" to work hard right before we powered up a hill. 

Next year, we're planning on running the race together as a two-woman team.  I haven't run a marathon (or at least, not one I'd like to remember: before my daughter was born, I ran/hobbled one through a stress fracture and another through serious diarrhea) and don't want to train for one, but 25 miles broken up by time in a van, proper hydration, and stretching seems more manageable while also sounding like an amazing challenge.   

Relay bound

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for the Fall 50.  This year, I'm doing it for the second time on a 5-person team.  Next year, my friend and I want to sign up as a 2-woman team.

Here's what I've packed:
Two sports bras
One running tank
Capris and two pairs of shorts
Two pairs of thigh-high Halloween socks
Three different weights of jackets (today the wind was 30 MPH--hoping for less on Saturday!)
A tutu from Target
A bag full of Luna bars (chocolate raspberry) and Earnest bars (chocolate peanut)
Peanut butter
Almond butter
Fig Newtons
My eyelash curler
My Garmin
Two pairs of running shoes
My massage stick
Icy hot

I am so excited!