On October 18th, I raced 10K on a bad leg, with a chip time of 44:21.
I did not manage to fully recover the hamstring. I stayed off the
track for an entire month, except for one time, and did only long
runs, both easy and tempo. Today I raced again. I smashed the 44:21
time with 43:25 (unofficial). If the chip time matches or beats that,
we are looking at a sub-7 average pace, by half a second. I hope they
round down in the tabulated result listing. 🙂
For preparation, I allowed myself to eat a whole bunch of carbs
yesterday, just to make sure my glycogen stores were topped off. But
the cutoff time was 6 p.m. after which I ate nothing until morning,
when I had coffee and a small portion of oatmeal. I prepared my usual
concoction of maltodextrin powder and a bit of gatorade crystals for
flavor. I drank that some 50 minutes before the start. I wore my
Asics Gel-Magic racers.
I did some strides 10 minutes out. Then with 4 minutes left to go, I
realized that the temperature had risen too high and I would be best
off without my nylon shell! No time to go to the bag check though. I
ended up leaving it with a volunteer, who put it into the bag check
for me.
The idiotic starting line was badly designed, forcing runners through
a narrow fenced strip like cattle. I lost a few seconds there, because
I was not able to do the usual trick of running around everyone, then
diving in to hit the timing chip mat, and then leaving the crowd again
to run around them.
I hit the 5K mark at 21:03. That was the only time I glanced at the
chrono. Seeing that split gave me courage and hope! The second half
was slower because there is a fairly long uphill stretch. The
hamstring started to bother me quite a bit, but I didn't care, because
I have no race coming up any time soon.
All in all, it was pretty smooth sailing. Pretty uneventful.
I ran very hard for the finish and was completely wasted. I looked so
bad that I attracted the attention of a photographer, who took a bunch
of closeups of my dying self while my chip was being clipped off by a
volunteer.
As I was driving home, there were still throngs of runners finishing
the 10K event. In fact, as I zipped all the way to the other side of
town where I live, I realized, holy [censored], I'm home already and there
are still a few poor buggers running the thing!