5/3 River Bank Run, Conquering the Capital 2014, and Injury

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5/3 River Bank Run
Everyone has that home event that they want to do. For me that was the 5/3 River Bank run in Grand Rapids, MI. My home town.  Five years ago I would have never thought it was possible to run so far (25k). After all my hard work, I finally could say it shouldn't be too bad :). I did a lot of reflection back to my old couch potato life building up to this event. It was also really cool because family was going to be there to cheer me on.

On race day I was feeling really good. I did a great warm up with one of the front runners. Man it would be cool to be way up there. I decided to be ambitious and start with the 7 min/mile group. I stayed with them for the first 1/2 of the event, however then I decided to cool it off a bit so I didn't die.  My 1/2 way split was 7:05 min/mile. I continued on, and I must say the crowd was great! Every time I was feeling down they picked me back up. My last 1/2 went by pretty fast with some tough hills. I finished at 7:25 min/mile for the second 1/2. Final time for the 25k was 1:55.

Rating overall was a 5 out of 5. Everything was amazing: crowd, organization, stations, metals, and having my dad there.



Conquer The Capital

Two weeks later it was on to the next event. Madison has a lot of fun races. They split there major marathon event into two weekends a while back to avoid the cancellation due to heat that has been becoming more of a thing. Anyway, they have a spring weekend, and a fall weekend. The spring events were this past weekend. They have 3 events, the twilight 10K, the 1/2 marathon, and conquer the capital (run both events).  The 10K was on Saturday night at 8pm and the 1/2 marathon was that next morning at 7AM.  I signed up for the conquer the capital.

Training for it was weird. I ran a lot of back to back weekend runs to make sure I could do it. During training I ran into an injury on my ankle. It was really tough on the second day runs. However, I continued on, just didn't push hard in practice.

The 10K night race was really hard because I had to hold back, which if you know me is really hard to do. I finished in 48:00. Not horrible, and I felt pretty good. After hanging out for a couple minutes I went home and tried to go right to sleep.

I got about 6 hours of sleep before I woke so I could eat a solid breakfast.  I had the normal single piece of toast with banana, pb, and honey.  Its so good :).  I did a decent amount of stretching to avoid injuring my ankle more.

The beginning 3 miles I was really taking it easy to get the body up and running on day 2. Then I started picking it up. When we ran through the arboretum we saw a pack of wild turkeys. How cool is that? I ended up finishing in 1:35 for the half marathon. I was super excited to get another PR!

Total time between the two races was 2:23. I ended up 23rd overall, which was pretty exciting for me.  I did like the different challenge. I'm not sure I'll do this one again, but I thought it was really fun having to work the strategy a lot more.  I also suggest taking that Monday off and getting a massage. It was amazing. I would rate the experience at a 5 out of 5. I had a lot of fun. It was very mentally challenging.

Injury

It happens. After the last event I was kind of hurting. Every morning felt like I was 90 years old limping around the house until my Achilles tendon loosened up. Eventually I decided to go see a doctor where he gave me the worst news. I had to stop running for a month or so to let it heal. I attempted a rebuttal asking if I could just run slower and less often. He then Google Image Searched "snapped achilles tendon". If you have a solid stomach go check it out. Basically from that I decided its best to take some time off. Oh well.  So instead I've been biking and lifting. Just because I'm injured doesn't mean I can't do any training, I just can't run. Trying to minimally impact my calf/ankle.  It sucks. I'm getting toward the end of the waiting period. It feels about 80%. Next week I'm going to try to go for a mile jog. If it hurts I have to go get further tests. Wish me luck.

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