I love running different types and distances of races. I prefer the trail but still run a lot of road races and I see the value in both. Road racing is certainly an easier terrain and allows us to go considerably faster, but that is also the challenge. Trying to maintain a fast pace for a long period of time, whether it is a 10k or marathon, is physically and mentally draining. I have now run 12 races so far this year and they have varied so much that it is difficult to make any comparisons between them to see if I'm making any progress. Even though I've now run 3 half marathons, it is even hard to make any conclusions from that data since the circumstances for each race have been drastically different.
This post is about the 2 races that I ran since my last post: The Run for Retina Research Half Marathon and the Brant Death Racers Relay Race.
After running the Georgia Death Race a couple of weeks ago, my legs were trashed. I can only recall them being this sore a couple of times in the past. I know they felt like this after doing the Canadian Death Race a few years ago and also after running the Foothills 50k in South Carolina. Although I made sure to run a little every day, it was nearly 5 days before I could run without considerable muscle pain. None of my runs were more than 5-6k and they were all run at a very slow pace. Leading up to the Run for Retina Research, I actually had no idea what to expect. I suspected a 1:40:00 would be a smart goal to set but, as usual, once the race started, my plan went out the window.
It was -4C with some some snow on the trail and a few really icy sections. There were also a lot of rolling hills to contend with, which to me felt like mountains. It actually sounds worse than it felt at the time. The course was scenic and the double out-and-back route gave us a lot to look at. From about 7k to 16k, I wanted to quit running altogether. Everything sucked. My pace was starting to slip and I wanted to be done. At 16k, I started to feel better and by 18k, I actually picked up the pace a little bit and felt pretty good. I was happy to finish in 1:33:39, which was good for 7th place overall. Now that I was feeling more recovered from Georgia, it was time to start to follow through with my plan; more speedwork!
I had a couple of good runs in the week that followed and even did some interval work. My next race was a relay race put on by a great group, the Brant Death Racers. I ran this event last year with Heather and I was really excited to be running it again. This time, my buddy Matt Lowe would be my partner.
The weather got really bad leading up to the race. It was cold, very windy, rainy, and freezing rain was in the forecast. It certainly wasn't going to stop us though, besides, I don't mind running in the rain. The course was a 1.1km loop, which takes runners down a steep hill, through some single track, up a big climb, and then a short flat section back to the start. Teams of 2 take turns each running a loop. Teams have 1hr to run as many loops as they can.
It turns out that the trail conditions were surprisingly good and that the wind and rain weren't an issue at all on the trails.
The event was really fun. It was a great interval workout as we would run as hard as we could for 5 minutes and then rest for 5 minutes. I was the weaker link on our team as Matt ran 4 out of his 6 loops faster than me. However, I made our team shirts so that kind of evens it out. Ok, fine; Heather made the shirts, but I watched.
All in all, it's been a good couple of weeks of running and I'm excited about next weekend's race, which is a trail 10k. Hopefully I can get in some good training runs this week and go into the weekend feeling recovered.