It's official, I'm an idiot - The Oakville Half-Marathon Race Report

I don't want to turn this into a pity-post, and just a huge line of excuses, so it might seem a little abrupt. It would be too easy for me to ramble on about all of my excuses, and now have a ton of concerns heading into the big race. Nobody needs to hear that, or read it. So this might seem a little bare bones compared to other race reports.

As I went through the morning preparations, I noticed my right foot hurt when I walked. Pain right on the outside, but I ignored it and made my way to the race site. As I walked to the start, the pain was more noticeable, but I figured it might have just been the shoes, and it would disappear once I put on my race shoes.

Which it did.

Until I did a warm-up jog. And it came back full force.

Now, if I wasn't an idiot, I would have bagged it right there. This was a test, and not worth worsening an injury. But I also couldn't handle a DNS. I did that once, and I regret it to this day. And who knows, maybe the pain will go away. (Pride goeth before the fall, as they say.)

When the gun sounded, I took off and fell into a good pace. My goal pace for the day was 4:10-4:12/km, and I was good through 5km. My foot hurt, and it was exacerbated by the crown of the road we ran on, but I managed. Around this time, I felt like I was working much harder than I should have been. Maybe it was because I only had 1.5 feet to work with. The residual fatigue wasn't too bad from Saturday, but I couldn't muster anything special. My pace started dropping to 4:15-4:20/km as the pain intensified, and I ran through 8km at 4:35 for the last K.

And that's where it ended. I had to walk. The pain was too much, and trying to push through was too taxing. From that point, I just tried to keep myself mentally in the game as the race went by. I could only run a couple of kilometres before I had to walk. I tried running slow, it still hurt. I tried running fast, it still hurt. When I could get myself moving, I was hitting an easy 4:30-4:40/km, but most of the time it was 5-6 min because of walk breaks. Finally at 18km, I forced myself to actually pretend I was a runner for a while. "Fake it til you make it." I knocked out a 4:20 and 4:30, then was hobbled for a couple hundred meters. I eased into the finish, restrained myself from giving the finger to the race photographer, and got my medal (which I'll toss in a box since this isn't anything to brag about).

Official results:
13.1 miles: 1:39:14, 121/801 overall, 23/81 AG

What a disgusting display. Not only was 10-12 minutes of my target, I was 2 minutes slower than Disney, where I paced myself to run a marathon the next day. I'm embarrassed to have this on my race ledger, especially after a fine performance on Saturday. What a weekend of ups and downs.

The walk to the car was the worst part of the whole day. I can't remember the last time I hurt that much. Pain, anger, disappointment were swirling around in my head. What a waste of a day. I didn't learn anything, and instead may have screwed things up for the primary race. Idiot. I've since been able to set all that aside, and get regrouped. I need to get my foot in order. Luckily, the plan required a few easy days now to recover from the weekend, that gives me time to make things right.


* And please don't think that I don't appreciate that most people would be ecstatic about finishing in that time, especially on a bum wheel. I know enough to count my blessings, but I feel like an Olympian who spent years training for one event, then had the worst possible race at the worst possible time. But I'll get over it, and get another shot in two weeks.

** And looking at the length of this post, I failed in making it short, and did turn it into a pity-post. I'm sorry.