Race Number 4: Highland Games 10k

I have been trying to write this post for over two weeks now.  Usually when I write something, the ideas flow pretty easily and I have material I can work with in less than half an hour.  I have started and stopped writing about this race five times.  To sum up my feelings about this race at the time - complete failure. 

This race was the goal race for my 10k clinic I had enrolled it.  I considered the people in the course with me friends and dreaded the thought of racing them.  The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach began 5 weeks before and I knew at that point I was going to blow it.  In retrospect, I should have saved myself a lot of grief and not signed up for the race, but I didn't'.

This course is very close to my house, in fact part of it runs around my house.  I trained on the toughest part of it twice a week.  I should have rocked it, but I didn't'.  I started out way too fast and about half way through I was out of energy.  The last 4k felt like they dragged on and on.  I was passed by people in my clinic that knew where their inner racer was, but I just couldn't find mine.  I dragged myself through the last half of the race.  My time in this race was 60:01.  I had ran the course 3 minutes faster during one of my training runs.  I was disappointed in my time but as I approached the finish line I remember hearing my girls cheering for me like crazy and I found the positive in the race. 


At a party hosted by Scott and Katherine (who knew where their inner warriors were during the race) I talked to Mike from Grand River Running.  Mike has ran over 500 races and I consider him the Yoda of my running world told me I just needed to keep running more races until I got to the point were it was no big deal to stand at a start line.  His talk with me that night although it only lasted a few minutes is the reason why I kept racing.  Had it not been for his words of encouragement, I would have walked away from racing and probably running altogether. 

Mike told me about a race the following weekend that he and Bob were racing.  My husband and I would go just before we left for a week long vacation with the kids.  I also decided that I would start training for a half marathon to run in the fall.  So at that I learned that despite the huge let down I needed to just pick up the pieces, lace up my shoes and move on.