I finally made up my mind and entered the race "Kraftprovet" today. I have thought back and forth for a few days and have had a hard time deciding wether I should run this race or not. Yesterday I met a friend who had made his mind up and he said to me "
ok, see you at the starting line then" And I guess that was the kick I needed, so I met him at the starting line and we passed each other a couple of times in the beginning of the race, then I lost sight of him but knew that I was ahead of him, which felt satisfying. (I actually beat him with 6 minutes :-)
The forecast said 16C and light rain wich I thought would suite me. As it turned out it must have been quite a few degrees warmer, no rain and partly sunny. I had dressed for rain so I was a bit warmer than I would have liked but every now and then we ran in areas with a nice cool breeze and some people had also put their garden hoses out to spray the runners and that was also helpful.
I learned a lesson running into the first garden hose fontain -
your glasses also get wet - that made my vision a bit blurred until my next walkbreak when I got the chance to wipe them off with my shirt. When running into the next hose shower I took my glasses off and held them away from the water, that worked fine. Lesson learned.
I ran/walked with a 3:1 ratio as strictly as I could, with a few adaptions around the water stops and also at the most brutal hills, and for the last bit I turned the intervall timer off and just ran.
Parts of the track were on rather narrow trails and that made the running part of run/walking a bit difficult. When walking many runners passed me but when running I wanted to go a bit faster than the crowd around me and it was sometimes impossible to pass them as the track wasn't wide enough. That might have slowed the total time down a bit but in return I guess it also gave me a bit of rest which maybe made me stronger for the later part of the race.
Closing in on the finish I passed quite a few runners and that felt really good, then suddenly, out of nowhere, came a guy in a grey shirt and passed me. That woke something up inside my head and I thought "
Oh no you don't.. no way I'm letting you pass.." I managed to catch him up and we ran side by side, speeding each other up, towards the finish. Finally he was a bit stronger and reached the line an armlength ahead of me. But we ended up with the same time in the result. (ha, gotcha)
This was the first time I entered this local race and I'm glad I did. I met a lot of friends before and after the race and I also found that many other friends were out watching the race. As they recognized me and shouted my name I got extra power from somewhere, maybe from the joy I find in their concern and interrest in what I'm doing. I hope for a cool day for next years "kraftprovet" and will most certainly participate again in the future.
I'm very pleased with my run. Before the start I said that if can manage 1 hour and 15 minutes I would be happy but was open for a time towards 1:30. As I passed the 5k mark just under 30 minutes I was surprised and then the 10k mark at almost exactly 1 hour. That made me feel even stronger and very pleased with myself. I ended up finishing at 1:09:12. I heard the speaker call out my name and my time just as I finished. It was a lot of fun.
I recorded this episode last week on two of my runs. I'm not running distances long enough to record all at once. I'm afraid you (and myself) have to put up with this solution for a while. Coming back after the injury seems to take longer than expected. I wanted to jump right in where I was at when I got injured but I realize that precaution is required. and I'm also a bit out of shape to say the least so I'm giving myself plenty of time to build my strength and endurance back.