It's been over 11 weeks since my last race, but not by design. The left calf cramp/strain issues I experienced in my first two races took longer than I hoped to heal. I badly wanted to run the Medtronic TC 1 mile on May 12th, but decided to skip the race for precautionary reasons. My injury was much improved, but knowing the TC1 would be a short, fast, uptempo race, I just didn't want to risk blowing it out again.
My next scheduled race was the Minneapolis Half Marathon on June 5th. However the race was cancelled right before the event, due to a conflict with the race course permit. Apparently a section of the course was impacted by mudslide that happened several months ago and the city is still working on road repairs there. But it forced the city of Minneapolis to refuse approval of the course permit, asking that race organizers to come back with an alternative for that section of the course. Race organizers dragged their feet too long and eventually had no choice but to cancel the event. This was a large race impacting thousands of participants. I place full blame on the race organizers, as the city gave them more than enough time to find an alternative for the city to approve.
Which brings me to today's race. I registered for all my races in January. At that time, a 4th of July race sounded really nice and cozy. The weather was actually quite nice considering that heat and humidity is not foreign to even Minnesota this time of year. It was 64 degrees at the start of the race (6:30am) and about 70 degrees at the finish line (8:00am), with sunny sky's and light winds. This was an early morning race. A very early morning race. I got up at 4:30am, arrived at the race site by 5:30am and got warmed up and ready to go by 6:30am.
My left calf injury is feeling fine again now, however I didn't enter this race with a great deal of confidence. I was a bit worried that running again at race pace may potentially re-aggravate the injury, as it's been 11+ weeks since I've run extended miles at race pace. Not the confidence builder I am looking for coming into this race. I figured my best approach was to go out at a moderate half marathon pace initially and take it from there. The last thing I wanted to have happen is another calf aggravation early in the race and then have to gut it out for another 10 miles or so. If that happened, I figured I would likely drop out, rather than try to run uptempo for that distance, risking serious injury.
Today's race began near downtown Minneapolis on the along the Mississippi River on West River Parkway just west of the Stone Arch Bridge. From there, the course headed west on Plymouth Avenue, then north on Theodore Wirth Parkway. Then north and eventually east on Victory Memorial Drive back to the river. From there it followed the river south back to the finish line on the northeast end of the Stone Arch Bridge.
My intention was to run the first few miles at a moderate half marathon race pace around 7 minutes/mile, but my Garmin was registering an 8 minute mile pace across the first 3 miles. After 9 years of running, I have a good sense for what my pace is without the assistance of a Garmin and I felt like I was running 7 minute miles. By mile 3 I was so discouraged with my race pace that I just wanted to get tot he finish line and call it a day. Going into this race I had no aspirations of competing for one of my top half marathon times, but I also wasn't anticipating my race pace to be this slow either. I didn't realize that my Garmin was malfunctioning. I've never had problems with it in the 9 years I've used Garmin's. But for some reason, it chose to malfunction during my race today. My total time was spot on to the second with the race clock, but my Garmin was over-extending my mile splits early in the race, which is why my pace was registering slower than it actually was. In hindsight I should have questioned this, but I wrongly assumed it was accurate. I figured the 11 week race layoff had a bigger impact on my ability to race today than I expected.
Eventually, my Garmin began measuring miles correctly, but my overall distance and pace was messed up because of the early miles. When I crossed the finish line, my Garmin reflected a distance of 12.5 miles total vs. the 13.1 miles I actually ran. So my actual race time/pace was faster (7:11/mile) than I thought I was running, but still well off my top 10 half marathon times. I finished with a time of 1:33;58, good for 89th place among 2,266 finishers and 3rd in my age group among 68. It felt good to finally get another race under my belt, but I also want to get back to my true racing form. My time today was almost 4 minutes slower than average half marathon times. Hopefully I can get back on track in time for my next race which is also a half marathon - the Urban Wildland in Richfield on August 6th.
Results:
http://www.mtecresults.com/runner/show?race=4176&rid=1132
