In January, Aaron and I signed up to do a half marathon this August. At the time, I was working on recovering from a knee injury and that eight months seemed like it would be enough time to be healed up and run a good race.
Our training was going along just fine, until three weeks before the race, when we ran in CA with Aaron's brother. It was a pretty run in a canyon, but was harder on me than I thought. The following Wednesday, during a regular run, my knee started hurting in a new and interesting way. When I went to the Dr., he told me that I had hurt my IT band. (They call it runner's knee--a hopeful diagnosis.)
So, not to bore you with the details, Aaron and I did run the race on August 20th. Our longest training run was the one in CA at 8 1/2 miles, not the training I would have hoped for. Aaron took off running with the pacers. He was hoping to finish in 2:15. He ended up at 2:30. I ran 4 minutes and walked 1. It's a good strategy for running with an injury, as it gives you a chance to rest. I did really well up until mile 10, then my body was done. I finished in 2:46 by my watch, which I stopped for breaks. The race clock said 2:55.
We were both rather stiff and tired the next day. Towards evening, I developed a pain in my foot. After a long week of stretching and icing three times a day, it's getting better. I'm hoping we can run this week.
One of the best reasons to run a race is for the t-shirt. Ours have a foot print on them with the words "only half crazy" in it. It pretty much sums up why we run.
