2 years ago I said I’d never do the Philly Half Marathon again. For whatever reason 3 weeks ago I changed my mind and signed up. I was in a mad rush to get myself in shape and this was a huge mistake.
What I’m about to display in this post is a horrible way to run a race. In the 3 weeks I was “training”, I never did a constant run for further than 8 miles. I’ve stressed before that in order to run a race successfully, you have to be able to exceed the distance in practice. I learned the hard way.
I woke up at 6am and ate a single egg and a Chocolate Chip Chewy bar. I rocked a deuce and felt pretty good all things considered. I walked to the race which is about a mile and half from my house. As soon as I met up with Nikkii and CK4, I had to take another shit. This was not good. I waited 10 minutes in line and had the runs which I knew was a bad omen. I did little warm up and waited in the corral for the race to start.
My first mile was 5:55 but I immediately had a sock problem as it felt like it was sliding in the shoe and this usually leads to blisters. My 3 mile time was 17:33 which I knew was fast but I felt pretty comfortable and figured I’d give myself some room to fall off of 6 minute mile’s. I followed that with a 5:50, 6:02, 6:01. That was mile 6 and almost half way through the race. At this point I knew I was fading a bit but was still pretty comfortable in all areas. I rattled off a 6:12, 6:19 for the next 2 miles and started to know I was in trouble. The 8 mile mark is near the bridge in East Falls and it was like a Mack truck ran me over. My next mile was 6:33 as I tried to keep it together. Mile 10 was done in 6:39 and my ten mile time was 61:12. I knew this time was respectable and even at the current pace I would finish with a respectable time in the low hour 20’s. It was not to be.
Mile 11 was done in 6:45 as I remember thinking, “wow, I feel horrible and I’m still able to break 7.” This thought proved troublesome. My foot started to bother me and it felt like my legs were made out of lead. I ran a 7:32 next mile and I was only 1.1 miles away from the end. Unfortunately my body completely broke down and in 2 separate times I stopped to walk. When I walked, my brain felt dizzy and I felt like I was going to collapse. I ran the last 1.1 in 9:16, which is incredible, and my finish time was 1:24.46 (6:27 pace). I was passed by about 100 people in the last 3 miles and was so happy to finish the race that I once again swore it off forever.
I’m not sure how much of a difference it would have made if I started slower but that’s not my style. I’m not a long distance runner and from now on I’m capping myself at 10 mile races. My feet were blood blistered up and I probably took about 6 shits today. It’s not been fun and it cost me $130 bucks and entire weekend of doing nothing for almost 0 satisfaction. Fuck running.
This blog post made me lol. However, there was alot of TMI !