First half marathon

Since my last post I’ve continued on my training for the half marathon though I hit a couple of set backs. The first set back was our family summer vacation not long after that post.

We went to North Carolina but stopped into Maine and upstate New York for a while on the way. I did manage to get some running in while we were gone, but not nearly as much as I should have. The temperature was hot and even short runs had me drenched. I also didn’t keep up my nutrition either which made running harder ad set me into a bad routine. It probably set me back about 1.5 months were I did very little running. I had been doing about 40km a week before that and over a 6 week period I did a total of bout 55km.

Thankfully I pulled it together and got back into a good routine with 11 weeks left to train for race day. I modified things a bit and was doing only about 3 runs per week most weeks Tuesdays, Thursdays, and then a long run on Sundays. Previously I had a short easy run on Saturdays, but I found it was really affecting my long runs so I cut it out. Maybe I wasn’t taking it easy enough.

The next set back came on September 26th. It was the day of a work 24 hour relay event. The Sun Never Sets on a8c 5k relay. We have at least one person run a 5k every hour for a full 24 hours. It fell on a Thursday which was a scheduled run day for me anyway. I planned on doing 15km, but 6km into it I had to stop. I was getting sharp pain in my left leg and it wasn’t one of those things that would work itself out.

It turns out that it was a strained adductor muscle. I quickly booked the first appointment with a Physiotherapist that I could get and took it easy until I could get into see them. I did research some light stretches and exercises and did those daily until I got there. The Physiotherapist I saw was fantastic. Gave me great advice, a structured exercise plan including some of the ones I was already doing, and treatment while I was there. The acupuncture with electrical stimulation was so cool. We came up with a plan to to ease back into some running and as long as the pain didn’t get worse as the run went I should be fine. I did a 2km run one day, then a 5km run, then a really easy 15km run. They progressively felt better each one, and each time the pain got better the longer the run went. I had one more appointment for a check up and treatment, but I was back in it.

I think the mental impact was as bad as the physical I really wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to run in the race after training for so long. That and running is really good for my mental health anyway, so not being able to do it was rough. Thankfully I had my family and a friend who was training to do an ultra 50km marathon at the same event with me to talk through things with. It really made a difference to have someone going through some of the same things as me during their training and to be able to get out and run with a couple of times.

Race day came and Ella an Noah got up early to drive me to the event and to cheer me on at the starting line. The day before had been very windy and rainy and it had me worried. Though it was a bit colder than I would have liked the wind wasn’t bad and it was pretty sunny. Overall pretty good running conditions.

Early on in my training I had set my goal to do a sub 2 hour half marathon. I knew with the injury set back that it would be tough. I hadn’t got there yet in the training but I was close. For about the first 13km I was able to keep it to the right pace but ran into some hills and couldn’t sustain the pace for the rest of the time. But over all I felt really good up until about the 19km mark. That’s when my legs were really feeling it. By the time I was coming up to the finish line I was going pretty slow. But I made it across without stopping once for the whole time and did it with a gun time of 2:02:00 and chip time of 2:01:19. I’m happy with those results given the whole picture, including the fact that I’m turning 45 at the end of the month.

I’ve been running off and on for about a decade now. It was 2014 when I first ran in a Valley Harvest event. I ran the 10km that race and was in pretty good shape. I ran it again the next year in 2015 and wasn’t in as good of shape. Then I didn’t run again until 2019 when I was really not in good shape and did the 5km. 10 years later when I first started I ran the half marathon.

Next I plan to keep the running up but also add in strength training to hopefully prevent another injury. I won’t push distance for a while, but 10km is a nice comfortable distance so I’ll keep that as my max for a while. But my plan is to train again and get the half marathon below that 2 hour mark.

Here’s my Strava training log from when I started including the off weeks in the middle.