So to start my final week of hard training, I ran the Coeur d'Alene half-marathon. A nice local race as additional practice handling race day jitters and going out as hard as I can, racing against the clock.
Waking up, the weather is perfect- a sunny dry 50-ish degrees warming a bit with only light wind. I rested great the night before, and was feeling good. I made myself my liquid breakfast fruit smoothie and coffee, and bottle of liquid calories to take with me. Nutrition- check; I've been perfecting this each weekend as I go out for long rides/runs.
I get to CdA in plenty of time to check out the start area, wait in line for the honey bucket, and perform a warm-up. The warm-up didn't go so swell. My achilles for some unknown reason decided to flare up over night. Super sharp shooting pains like I've never experienced before. I have no idea what this is all about. The last thing I want to do is further aggravate whatever's going on, but I need this race as a confidence booster for Ironman. I must run this race. If the achilles is going to prevent me from finishing, than so be it. But I will start the race and see how long I last.
My achilles ended up being the last of my race frustration. So I start the race, keeping an excellent pace and feeling strong. The achilles speaks to me on uphills, but otherwise stays fairly quiet. I'm OK with that. I continue along, still keeping an awesome pace while still holding back a bit so that I can have something left in the tank to go all out the last three miles. One mile at a time, making it happen. Enjoying the course as it is for the most part the same route as the Ironman course... I neglected to take a look at a course map prior to the race because I was certain the course would be marked well and I knew the terrain. So I enjoyed just being out there and racing.
About half way, I started looking for the turn-around point. My watch hit 6 miles and I started seeing people coming back the other direction. My watch then hit 6.5 miles and I knew the turn-around must be right around the corner (there were quite a few turns in the course right there). Then my watch hit 7 miles and as I crested a half-mile incline, I didn't see the turn-around anywhere. Then I noticed that everyone running with me had red race numbers, and I had a blue race number... I was on the full-marathon course and had missed the turn-around over a half mile back. Can we say idiot? To focused for my own good. It was the run of shame as I ran against traffic who all knew why I was running backwards. Super embarrassing. I was on par to PR, and finish among the top few. And that hope had now been crushed.
I decided I would run as fast as I could from that point on and try to make up as much time as possible (not that I wasn't running as fast as I could before; I just had a little fire lit underneath me now). Sooooooo frustrating. It was truly a training run as I raced a 14.4 mile half-marathon instead of the standard 13.1 miles that everyone else ran. I finished respectively, and averaged a great pace overall. But really? Another race that doesn't go as planned? Another item to add to my list of "things not to do" on race day or during a race. Next time I'll familiarize myself with the course a bit better and do a better job at paying attention to my surroundings. Hello PAM.
Good grief. As if I'm a rookie.
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