185

went out for a nice lil 10 mile run yesterday, in preparation for the Columbus Mini 15K tomorrow. Headed over to the bike path, I haven’t run much lately so I initially told myself I’d be happy with sub-9:30s.

I hit the first half-mile at 4:17, and told myself that sub-9s would be good, so long as I could sustain it through the whole 10 miles.

I suffered from the same problem I tend to have: I would like I was struggling, then realize it’s because I’d sped up. I kept trying to tell myself to slow down, but in the end I was still pleasantly surprised with how I was doing and feeling:

1: 8:23
2: 8:09 (a bit short)
3: 8:21
4: 8:28
5: 8:20. Stopped for a few minutes. Felt really great, felt pretty confident I would continue well under 9s
6: 8:33
7: 8:36

Then the wheels fell off. My knee had given a brief twinge in mile 6, and now it came to a grinding halt. Literally: I could feel things moving with my hand as I tried to bend my leg. I walked for close to a mile before slooowly doing a combination of walking and jogging back to the car.

Disappointing: I don’t know if I just was pushing it after doing 9 on Sat with the gang, then a quick 25 min on Thurs, before trying for the 10 on Friday, or if the whole “not going to the gym anymore” was kicking in or what. The speed I was going felt decent when I was running, I was pleasantly surprised at how familiar the pace felt. I woke up this morning with my knee still hurting, but over the course of the day it’s been feeling better, so hopefully the race tomorrow will go ok.. I’d like to do 8s but I really don’t want to do any serious damage. I was almost wondering if it was some light ITB flaring up…