Disaster: Turkey Trot 5k 2010 Recap

That's the only way to describe today's race, disaster. It was freezing this morning, about 40 degrees and windy. I wore my Under Armour Cold Gear, wicking yoga pants, and Bondi Band over my ears, and was still a little chilled. There were no directions on how to get to the race, Hubs signed us up, and instead of asking exactly where the race was being held, just got a vague idea of the location. Of course we were running late getting there, and then getting lost pushed us back even further. As we pulled into the parking lot the runners were all lining up at the start. I'm already a nervous wreck before a race starts, so this just sent me into a tail spin. We ran to get our numbers and quickly pinned them on as the runners took off.

We hopped in to the flow of racers, I didn't have my iPod, but no big deal, I've been running without it quite a bit lately. I did remember to throw my inhaler in my pocket, and I was sure glad I did, because about a mile into it, I needed it. I was wheezing. My Garmin took forever to start up, another casualty of starting late, so my timing and distance aren't accurate on my upload. The first mile we were cruising, while I was stressed and it was difficult to breathe, we made good time, we finished that mile in a speedy 8:57. I had remembered to disable the autolap function on the Garmin before the race, I accidentally hit the lap button twice though at that first mile, so that why you'll see 5 laps on the report. I wanted to measure the accuracy of the race and lap it myself at the mile markers, the problem with that was when the Garmin had the issue starting up, it only registered that first mile as 0.70, oh well. We cruised on through to the halfway water stop, where we stopped for a second and drank our little Dixie cup of water. After that things fell apart.

The second half of the race I lost it. I was well on my way to meeting my goal of coming in under 29 minutes, and I just lost it. I couldn't do it. Coming back from the water stop my side started to hurt. I mentioned before I've been having some medical problems lately, one of those problems is a fairly large ovarian cyst that's been causing quite a bit of issues lately. Well, the damn thing decided that right then was when it was going to act up. It felt like a knife was cutting through my side. Then, I got another asthma attack. Another couple hits on the inhaler, and it was a lot more walking. I felt like such a failure. I don't know why I can't mentally push through these things. The first half is always so easy, and then I always fall apart when I should be finishing strong.

According to the Garmin, we finished the second mile in 11:42, and the third mile in 13:58, and instead of it being .10 to the finish it was .23 and we did that in 2:50, overall, it took us 37:11, although the Garmin says the "Moving Time" was 34:17, not sure what that means. I do know I didn't stop the Garmin until we got inside and had already crossed the finish line, maybe 30 seconds or so. According to the official results our time was 38:11, but there was no timing chip, that was a stop watch, and we started at least a minute or more late, I'm guessing more like 2 minutes late.

When we got home I realized I couldn't find my headphones, somehow they weren't in my purse where I'd left them, and since I didn't use my iPod, I didn't know where they could be. I searched the car and still couldn't find them. I ended up going back to the race site. Turns out they had fallen out of my purse when I had moved my purse from the front seat of my car to the trunk. Luckily I found them. 

Right now, I'm hoping the medical issues get resolved in a timely manner, and I can work on keeping together to better train for the Disney Princess Half, and work on the mental aspects of running and speed.