After Crawfishman Tri, I was eager to start racing a bit again. I was signed up for a 10 mile trail race in June, Run for the Hills, that I did in 2020. I thought SURELY I would do better this year...after all I was an entire year further out from having a baby and must be more fit!
And all I did was suffer out there. I suffered the painful death of an out of shape runner, trying to get her body up and down little hills, and trying to be competitive but not really having the tools or fitness to do so. I started off super slow (or so I thought), but even my slow wasn't slow enough. I was just so painfully slow that I don't think it even registered for me that I needed to back down more. It was so odd. Last year I just felt better and better as the race went on. This year my pace was much slower and it just continued to get slower as the miles passed. I caught what I thought was 3rd place woman around the halfway point, thinking she had gone out too fast as she had been well ahead of me early on. But know what? She passed me back a mile later. That has so rarely happened to me, all I could do was encourage her on and just keep suffering by myself. I finished 4th OA female, which would start to become a theme... and never felt good the entire race.
This was clearly before the race, when I was happy. Post race, I was so grumpy that Dave, "Mr. I hate running," just went out there and ran like it was easy. I was feeling all of the feelings after this race...trying to balance my gratitude with also having a pity party.
Last year Dave beat me by 5 minutes (8 months postpartum) and this time he beat me by 13 minutes (16 months postpartum.). WTF you might ask? Me too.
One of my athletes, Emily, ran her first race EVER in her whole life and won 3rd place in the 5 miler. I was so stoked for her!
So I turned my focus to the Bay St Louis Spring Triathlon a few weeks later in July and my second of the year.
Swim (10th woman): Beach area walk swim, where everyone came out of the water in almost the same time because you couldn't really swim.
Bike (4th women's bike split): Finally- I felt like I was getting somewhere. I saw my friend Casey up the road and found I was bridging a little bit, and at least not losing time to her. A woman rode by me at about 60rpm just gobbling up the course, so that was notable. (And I would later watch her fly past me every single race...oh and she can run too). But otherwise, everything was good. I put an aero bottle on the front of my bike, but the straw kept falling over, so I had to hold that in place most of the ride. It was just one more thing to fix.
Run (10th women's run): I knew if I could catch Casey and put some time into her, I could maybe beat her as it was a time trial start. Yay! I love this! I love to run! Wait....why am I so slow. Um, why is my pace not getting any faster? Ummm... My big plan to unleash my run was just not happening.
So, you are telling me I can no longer really run?
It was hot. I caught Casey and we were both suffering but encouraging each other. All of the other women were just bouncing through the course. I tried to push and put time into Casey, but within the last quarter mile, I just had a feeling it wasn't enough. I didn't have enough and didn't have the well to go to. In the end, she got me by 10 seconds for the overall Master's spot. But really that didn't matter. What did is that I was even slower than I was at the last race, and now I couldn't even run an 8:30 min mile! I ran a 26:xx for a 5k, which was my slowest 5k ever in a triathlon.
I don't know why I was smiling here. I should have been trying to find 10 extra seconds of suffering. ;). Also, this is the only picture where my skin is not sagging everywhere.
In the end, I was 1st AG 40-44 and 7th OA female. I was disappointed in my run, but happy that my bike seemed to be coming along a bit.
I left the race thinking I needed to:
1. Get a bike fit since I had never been fit on my bike.
2. Fix the straw problem
3. Run in some different shoes since I had massive blisters after wearing these again.
4. Run? What in the world is going on with it? Is it the prolapse issues? (Yes, I still massively pee on myself all day and night, no matter what, and my stomach is stretched). Is it keeping me from biomechanically getting distance per stride? Is is the stretched out core? No strength? What is it???
On to the next race....
No comments:
Post a Comment