I haven't written a race report since the Goofy Race and a half challenge in January 2013. That's was my last race. Wow.
Last time I did this event, I ran from downtown as a warm up and had a really good result.
Having virtually no running under my belt in the last 18 months, turns out that wasn't a great strategy this time.
I underestimated how far it is from my office to the start (4.25km) and headed out far later than I should have. The head wind was no picnic either, this would be a challenging race for the back stretch was into that wind.
The drizzle, which Accuweather.com claimed wasn't happening, made for chills when then wind gusts picked up.
My legs were already fatigued and I had to turn up the pace with 1km of my "warm up" left and not much more than 5 minutes to make it in time (I was running backward along the race course and just passed the 1km marker heading to the start area).
I arrived in the corral in time to hear the announcer say "30 seconds!". Yikes!
Well, too late to worry about it, I took of at a slower pace, to hopefully find my legs soon, that seemed to be working. At the first kilometre marker, someone just behind me yelled out, that was a 5:20 first kilometre (I had no watch). Not stellar, but not too bad.
By 2km (which was really 6.25km for me!) I was starting to rethink my strategy. I took a quick walk break and regrouped. I started up again with a better spring in my step, but noticed that my right foot was tingly.
By 2.5km it was numb. I loosened my shoe and shook it out, didn't seem to help. So now I'm a bit paranoid since I've been having back issues, I hope it's not spinal nerve issues! But it felt familiar, I've had this before. I decide to take off my shoes and socks and when I did it was already better, I could see the pattern of my socks imprinted on the top of my foot.
I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I took off barefoot, holding my shoes in each hand. I've done enough barefoot running to know I could handle 2km, so I figured: why not? And I was moving. The last 2km were the fastest I'd run all day. It felt glorious. The wet pavement under my feet felt strangely soothing.
I got a lot of shocked and surprised comments from the runners I passed when they noticed I was in my bare feet.
I had already lost a ton of time so there was no real goal to achieve other than finishing strong. And that's what I did.
Without the insane warm up run or had I left 15 minutes earlier to to have time to recover before the race it would've been a completely different story. Not necessarily any better story, but very different. I likely would've started way too fast as usual.
A personal worst by nearly 10 minutes! Definitely not the smartest race I've ever run, but it was nice to be out there on the race course again.
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