Kingston Race Report

(Preparing to run for 6 hours)

( This was at about the 2.5 hour mark)

(I was happy with my strong finish)

I usually update my blog immediately, or close to that, after a race but I needed to do some thinking about this before putting it down on paper.

Saturday was a day filled with many ups and downs. I wasn’t able to achieve my goal of 60K although I was still pleased with my 55.5 K effort.

Throughout those 6 hours I suffered through hypothermia, chaffing, dehydration, nausea, cramping and hit the mental “wall” of pain and doubt. Eventually, though I also was able to find the inner strength to continue and actually picked up the pace on the final 1.5 hours of the race.

My speed training, although still in the infancy stage, really paid off for the first 2.5 hours and I was ahead of my predicted schedule by a few KM’s. Reality, though, kicked in after that and I suffered through feelings of self-doubt from about the 2.5 hour mark to the 3.5 hour mark. I kept asking myself why I was doing this? I am supposed to be training for a marathon not an ultra marathon. I hated that I was having these thoughts and that made me angrier than anything else. I started to convince myself that once I hit the 42.2KM mark (a full marathon) I was going to stop and call it a day.

At this point I was feeling cold and the tips of my fingers were starting to get numb. I had had these feelings before at a race and I remembered how hard that was to overcome. The inner parts of my thighs were burning as chaffing started to set in and no amount of body glide (a product similar to Vaseline) seemed to help. I was able to ask a friend for some Advil as the pain was become a little too much to handle. He actually gave me some Aleve which kicked in right away and that helped me tremendously. The aid station also had some anti-nausea medication so I took two of those as well.

While I was upset with myself for that middle part of the race, I was equally as proud of myself for the remaining 1.5 hours as I really picked up my pace and was able to finish strong. It truly is an amazing mental battle that takes place during these races.

Once the 5 hour mark hit and I had already secured 50KM, the rest of the race was gravy and I was able to complete another 5.5 KM. I was happy that I didn't allow my mental demons to take over.

I spent yesterday going through things in my head specifically about why I seem to have these down parts of my race. I know that I need to just focus now on building up my speed and endurance so that once my marathon arrives I will be able to sustain a good pace for the whole marathon. My 24 hour rule is I will allow myself to relive my race for only a period of 24 hours and then I must let it go and focus on something else. That is what I did yesterday. I went over what I did right and what I did wrong. I examined closely the things that I could have done differently and also allowed myself to be happy for what I had accomplished. I ran farther on Saturday than I did last year at this race on a tougher course (last year it was held at a horse track). Although I didn’t reach my goal of 60KM I can still be proud of what I accomplished. I ended up finishing 18th out of 50 runners.

Now my main focus will be on my marathon training. I will not be doing another race until August although I may look into doing a 5K or 10K race just to work on increasing my speed and endurance.