Random Post-Race Thoughts Again

My shin hurt like hell on Saturday, felt fine for 5 easy miles on Sunday morning and was really painful again later that day. I pondered if I should go running on Monday, but of course I was awake early and I'm not one to stare at the ceiling for hours, so off I went. In order to protect my shin, I ran back and forwards on the old, disused, overgrown railway line behind our house, but running a series of completely straight 0.8 mile stretches isn’t exactly ideal. The footing was bad enough in the dim early morning light and now that the road is no longer being used to transport vehicles to illegal building sites (the recession has its plus points), the gorse is taking over and I have the scratches to prove it.

I'm perfectly aware that my racing flats need replacing; they probably should have been thrown out at the start of the year, but I could not afford a new pair while the old one is still holding together somewhat (yes, money is tight). Niamh already agreed to your suggestion of using the prize money for new shoes, albeit shoes for the boys. Daddy’s feet will have to wait, but the racing season is over anyway and I won’t need flats for a good while.

I entered Saturday’s time and my age into the WMA age-grading calculator, and it gave me an age-equivalent time of 1:19:37 – wow, though I’d much rather run a sub-80 half marathon in reality rather than in an algorithm.

I was probably slightly exuberant when I said it may have been my best racing performance ever. My 61:51 10-miler in Ballycotton back in March was a better performance, but Valentia was much more satisfying. Ballycotton was basically a time trial. Valentia was a real race. I went out hard in order to keep up with Pat and it took until mile 9 or so for him to finally pull away from me. Luckily, it was enough to get me an age-group win (by a nice margin, too). Former marathon world record holder Steve Jones once said that they should knock him over if he was still standing at the finish line because it would mean he did not run hard enough. Not that I can compare myself to the likes of him, but in Valentia I managed the rare feat of passing that particular test – I basically collapsed after the line, entirely spent. Knowing that I had left everything out there just feels really good (well ... it felt good once I had recovered).

Just a minute after the start some spectator at the sideline shouted out loud “hey, look at that old man there”, meaning Pat of course (I didn’t look old enough at that point yet to qualify). While in one way it was a compliment, pointing out that the “old guy” was right there at the front, it really was an exceptionally stupid thing to blurt out loud. Whoever you are, consider yourself filed under “idiot”. The rest of the spectators were a different class though – they all knew Pat by name and gave him plenty of encouragement to drop me.

The shin was so bad on Sunday that I could not even dorsiflex it. It was significantly improved on Monday and better still today. I know how to nurse it, and teh short, very easy 5-mile runs of the last few days are part of that. My quads are quite sore as well, which is the price you pay for running all those downhill miles hard, but that will be gone soon.

3 Oct

5 miles, 45:24, 9:04 pace, HR 131

4 Oct

5 miles, 41:24, 8:17 pace, HR 136