Recovery...

Last weekend was amazing. 75kms over three days, not a tonne of distance for 3 days, but all runs were specific workouts. Throw in the 30km race, and it was a taxing 3 days. What more could a person ask for?
Over this week I have come up with an answer-- maybe a day or two between the Saturday hills at SFU and the Sunday race. The weekend was great. The week? Rough. People who do not run think that runners destroy their knees, but the reality is that a runner's quads are what get trashed.



This week was a very tough one for me. With little motivation to run after the race due to a terribly slow recovery, my only two runs on Thursday at the track to calibrate a foot pod, and Friday in the Shed totaled of 15kms. I had hoped that I would bounce back fairly quickly from the weekend. Lo an behold, my legs took their sweet time getting back into ready mode. It has not been fun. Even trying to use the stick to iron out some of the kinks was too much for me. Tight quads, tight hamstrings, tight ITs. It was a bad shot all around.

Here it is, two weeks out from the Chuckanut 50, and I am trying to get things back in order. Some distance running this weekend for about 30k seems to be out of the question, unless it happens tomorrow morning. The week looks pretty solid with a day off on Wednesday. I suppose what this post should really be called is the nerves before the big event.

Also this week, along with the trashed quads, I received on of these in the mail:

Apparently, my placing at the First Half Half Marathon has earned me a 3rd place in the Half Marathon Provincial Championships. I have a hard time believing that a 1:24:30 is good enough for 3rd place in the province, considering I came in 86th or so across the finish line. However, of licensed BC Athletics racers across the province for the championship race in the 35-39 catagory, I make the cut.

Check the Championship Results from the BC athletics web page:

Rollng in 25th Place of BC Athletics Members. A number to improve on for next year.

As I said after the race, I have my sights set on running a 1:19 next year, placing me in about 2nd, and moving me up to 16th or 17th. That is the goal right now for the half.

This little ribbon, a throwback to elementary school track days--which is cool in it's own right--encourages me to look at doing the next championship race--the Vancouver Sun Run. I have not tackled the sun run since the early 2000s. It is a race that I have not done due to the hassle of all the people -- all 50,000 of them. However, with a goal time of 35:30, I would likely place in the top 80, much like the half marathon result, hopefully in the top 10 of my age category. The drawback? $50 for a 10k run! Wow! That is steep. I think I could spend my money on another race and have a better time. Although, races around the lower mainland over the last couple of years have seemed to jump up in price, namely the BMO Vanocouver Marathon, and the Sun Run.

I will have to think on this one.