Walking wounded

So much for my pledge to post on a regular basis. For some reason, I'm just not into keeping up with things.

Anyway, last weekend's half marathon in Waterloo was a bit disappointing. The friend I was supposed to run with had an IT band injury and couldn't run. So I was on my own.

In consultation with my coach Ian, we decided that I could likely run somewhere between 1:33 and 1:35 given my training and current fitness level. Remember I was supposed to run this race as a training run, pacing my friend Glen in his first half marathon. His goal time was around 1:40, so I have been training for about a 4:45 per km pace for this race.

However, with Glen on the disabled list, I tried to run a faster race. And things started great! I was on pace for about a 1:33 finish until just after the 13k point. I had just run up a long (more than 1k in length) and steep (about a 6 or 7 percent grade) hill and my right hamstring was throbbing. It had been tight and giving me some issues in recent weeks, but I guess it was worse than I cared to admit.

From the 13k point on, whenever I tried to run faster than about a 4:40 per km pace, it felt as though the hamstring would go into spasm....similar to the feeling I had when I did in my left hamstring in a race in March 2010. So, having learned my lesson from that experience, I slowed things down and cruised home to a 1:40:27 time, finishing 31st overall and 10th in my age group.

As I said a bit disappointing at the time, but in retrospect and given my training, I finished just about where I should have if Glen had run the race with me. As Anne said when I got home, this wasn't really my race and I shouldn't have expected to run faster than 1:40, especially since I had been nursing a sore hamstring.

So this week has been an easy week of rest and slow-paced 5ks. My hamstring feels much better. I had visited a sports doctor prior to the race in Waterloo and she determined it was just an overuse injury. I've been stretching it really good after each run this week and as I said it's much better.

I hope with some additional stretching and a couple of massage therapy sessions I'll be good to go on May 29th for the ING Half Marathon here in Ottawa. After that I'll run a 5k in early June, then Ian will have me maintenance/recovery training for about 2 months.

Come the end of August, we'll ramp it up in preparation for the NYC Marathon November 6th.

Have a great weekend!