Sometimes we don’t accept our limits and get humbled.

Yesterday I set out to run the DC Rock ‘N Roll half marathon in 1:45, and crossed the finish line in 1:58:34.  Clearly things did not go according to plan, but really the plan was the problem.

In the month before the race I dealt with a bad cold and then bronchitis, which left me feeling exhausted all the time and having a hard time breathing in cold, dry air.  That meant skipping all but a few of my planned training runs in favor of rest, hoping that “tomorrow” I would feel better.  A lot of those tomorrows came and went without much relief.

Finally, after getting the official bronchitis diagnosis, I did get some lovely prescriptions, which did help but had side effects that included even more fatigue and making me feel really warm even when sitting on the couch.

So obviously when it came time for the race, I took that month of basically zero training, tiredness and imperfect lungs and decided what the heck, let me try to run my second fastest half marathon ever.

Through the first five miles, things were going great: 8:04, 8:10, 8:04, 8:00, 8:07.  I even for the first time followed a pacing group to keep me on target.

But then in mile six the wheels started coming off.  The mile time (8:31) will look pretty normal, but it’s misleading.  At the end of the mile, the course started up a giant hill that continued into mile seven.  Usually, hills are a strong point where I surge ahead of a ton of people.  I train on them all the time and really take pride in that.  But in this race, I just didn’t have that reserve to push through and come out on the other end able to slip back into my normal pace.

That was the story for the rest of the race:  10:14, 9:28, 9:20, 9:53, 9:41, 10:26, 9:35, :53.

In the past, I’ve done a few races where I didn’t think I was in great shape, but found those energy stores to push later in the race.  This time, every attempt to pick up the pace was like running in molasses.  I would go maybe 30 seconds before I couldn’t sustain it anymore and had to slow down.

My already elevated body temperature also made me drink probably twice what I normally do during a race, which both cost me time (running and drinking is hard) and was a feeling I was not used to at all.  I probably shouldn’t have taken the meds pre-race.

I also should have set a more reasonable goal somewhere around 1:52, and felt good about hitting that and coming back to fight another day.  Being unrealistic just made me frustrated (in mile 11 I spiked a Gatorade cup into a trashcan) and gave me a little bit of a setback in what had been a lot of progress getting over my sickness.

At least I got a cool medal out of it:

Time to get really healthy, and do another one in a few months, site TBD.