Edit: Days after the race, walking had become increasingly painful so I finally went to the doctor, got an MRI and was diagnosed with a Stress Reaction, which explained the previous 4 weeks of pain and the disconcerting finish time of this race.

I spent most of the week wondering if I’d be able to race today.  My runs have been progressively better, though they all start with a painful beginning, like I’m running on a wooden leg (extreme compression upon impact).  Thankfully, the hobbled part has decreased with each run and continues to dim with each successive mile.  So I was able to get in a couple 10-milers this week and by mile 6 or 7, forget about my leg completely, even picking up the pace on one run to 7:45-7:30s for the last few.

Still, I wasn’t sure if I should race on Saturday since the painful start is an ongoing issue and I was a bit nervous that racing might retweak me.  To test it out, on Thursday’s run I included a few pickups.  The first one felt twingy and made me think I better not race, but I then tried a couple more at around Half pace and they were fine.  Yesterday, I did a 5-miler w/4 pickups and those were totally uneventful, so I decided that Yes, I would race!

Funny how my initial worry when I signed up for all these 5ks was “It’s been so long since I’ve done anything near 5k pace, my times are going to suck whale dicks”.  Now, after a month of injury crap, my worries were “I hope this won’t hurt too much” and “I hope I don’t fuck myself up”.

To remove as much pain as I could out of the equation, I warmed up longer than I ever have before a race: 4 miles.  Luckily, I also had less wooden-leg-syndrome today so I was super pleased about that.  As for the race itself…

I had a hard time, just could not get my pace down and ran crazily close to my Half pace just a month ago.  My time sucked, 21:28, but I won 1st AG.

Last year at this same race, when I was far less fit then I am now, I got a disappointing 21:05, so all I can do is chalk it up to a month’s worth of injury.  On the positive side, my leg didn’t hurt during the race and feels fine now, plus I got an extremely oxidized rust-buster out of the way and my first bit of hard running in weeks.  Hopefully, next weekend’s 4-mile race will be smoother and my leg will be done with these injury shenanigans completely.

I was feeling all mopey about it when it was over and almost bagged the awards ceremony but instead, chose to kill time by walking home for a jacket since I live only a couple blocks away.  As I passed the finish clock ticking at 33:xx with a good amount of people still coming in, I saw the faces on these racers and the effort they were putting out and, I don’t know if it’s hormones or what, my eyes welled up.  Hell, they’re welling up right now thinking about it.  I just wanted to hug them all and let them know I thought they were great.

When I got to my apartment building, the girl who lives downstairs was also going inside.  Until now, she’s seemed kind of bitchy to me, barely said a couple words but she’d also come from the race, so we had a chat about running and she totally opened up.  She asked me my time and when I replied, she made it like I was some fast thing – it was really sweet.  Then I get back to the race site and chatted with a couple women separately who also asked me how I did and they, too, made me feel like a fast thing.  After I got my award (a medal), a woman that I recognized from those 33:xx finishers walked up to me to shake my hand saying “I’m in your age group and wanted to see what the winner looked like. Congratulations!”.

So listen, how can I whine about 21:xx when, for the luck of whatever, it could have been me trying to get that 33:xx and going up to shake someone’s hand?  This humbles me beyond belief. There will be no moping today, just gratitude for enjoying something I never dreamed I’d ever want to do, much less be kinda good at.  And to find it this late in life?  I’m one lucky, extremely grateful lady.

But I still hope next weekend is better.

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