Kzoo destroyed me

Kalamazoo. Half. Marathon. May 8, 2011.

So, it's been a week. It seems longer than that. I wonder why.

This race killed me. It was by far the hardest of my 4 1/2s so far. The day started a bit cool, but sunny with temps climbing close to 60 before the race was over. I felt excited and nervous, like always. I don't think my head was in the race like it should have been. I wasn't using my normal thinking. I was seeing the whole race and not just 1 mile at a time. I was thinking PR! PR! Run faster than in NYC. Bad move.

I started out feeling good, but I had little idea what my pace was for the first 3 miles. I had my phone keeping track, but I didn't check it and I know it can be unreliable at times. At mile 3 I wanted to die. I had a pain in my chest and stomach cramps on each side of my midsection. My mind was screaming "WALK!" But it was only mile 3! At that point I threw out the PR dream and just decided I needed to finish. Just finish.

Things didn't get much better. The chest pain subsided some, but the stomach cramps stayed most of the race. Everything was driving me nuts. The shirt I was wearing didn't fit right. The sun was too bright. I didn't have sunglasses. My shoe laces felt too tight. I couldn't even enjoy my music because I was annoyed by everything. I walked some. The only thing I enjoyed was the feel of the wind hitting me. I tried to concentrate on that. "The wind feels good, the wind feels good." At mile 10 I sent my Dad a text that said "Kill me now." During the last mile there was a pretty intense hill and a man screaming, "You are stronger than this hill." I loved hearing that. It also made me think, "I am stronger than this race." I will finish this race. This race will not beat me. I never actually considered I would have to drop out of the race, but it did feel like the race was beating the hell out of me most of the time. I felt chewed up and spat out and stepped on.

So, I finished with a little kick at the end, found my Mom waiting for me, and enjoyed lying on the soft green spring grass for awhile. Needless to say, I was glad it was over. And after looking back at my pace I saw that what had happened was I ran with the speed of possessed demon for the first 3 miles. TOOOOO FAST! This is probably because the last 2 5Ks I have run I've just gunned it and maybe I was used to being faster, but I failed to remember one of the first running lessons I had ever learned . . start slow. This race was not a 5K. Oops. Lessen learned . . again.

My time was amazingly only a couple minutes slower than in NYC. 2:17:48. pace: 10:31


After this race I felt a pretty extreme let down too, and not because it was a hard race and I didn't feel as strong as I had wanted. I just felt down. I felt kind of empty. I think some of this is because I always run these races alone (except Indy). Even though my parents are super supportive it still would be nice to run with people who know exactly what the race feels like. I'm trying to cultivate more running friendships . . more on that later. I also will be doing my best to run a race with the remarkable Miranda McDannel this fall!

So, I fought Kzoo . . and I won (barely). Good lessons learned. Moving forward.