Backstory
I got back from a 2 week trip to Russia on Tuesday night leading up to this Race. I figured I’d work Wednesday/Thursday and end the day at the race. I signed up because it was another race included as part of the Columbus Run Crew. This all sounded like a great idea before I left for Russia.
On my way over to Russia I’m pretty sure I picked up a bug of some sort in the JFK airport. Most of my trip while I was in Russia I had body aches, a fever, and was generally exhausted. Towards the end I had mucus buildup that I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. Additionally my voice didn’t want to cooperate so I had that going on too. Now pile on jet lag, going back to work the next day, and being sick going on 2 weeks. Suddenly this race was sounding like a terrible idea.
I debated whether or not to go. In hindsight I realize that participating but not racing never crossed my mind. I battled between the two extremes of not going at all and racing as well as my body would allow. I finally convinced myself that I wasn’t that sick, despite the fact that I had been too drained to even attempt to run the past few weeks. So off to the race I went.
Race
I sat off to the side at the race start blowing my nose and coughing like crazy. Yep this was going to be interesting.
I was at the start line and no one seemed to want to go to the front. I knew I shouldn’t have been one of the first ones to start! So I scooted back, but so did everyone else too. The race started and I let others go ahead of me.
It was still light out but already seemed much darker on the trail under the trees. I had my handy Knuckle Lights at this race which were 100x more comfortable than wearing a headlamp. The race thinned out pretty quickly and at about mile 2.5 I was on my own.
I was pushing myself too hard, and could barely breathe out of both my nose and mouth. I felt physically exhausted and just wanted to stop and walk the rest of this thing. At this point I was beyond frustrated for putting myself in this situation. I was almost half way done so I tried my best to power through. My breathing was heavy and from here to the finish I had to stop several times to cough up mucus. It was hard to get my body moving again after each stop.
With 1.5 miles left to go it was starting to get dark. I just thought about how if I wasn’t sick I wouldn’t have had to run in the dark for as long. Not much I could do about it now. The darkness brought about a new challenge for me which was following the trail. I don’t have very good eyesight without my glasses in the first place but my eyesight goes from bad to complete crap at night. I was hoping I would have been done with this race before it was so dark. With no one to follow I would often have to stop and look around for tree markings. In more open areas the trail looked the exact same as off-trail: just scattered leaves on the ground with no clearly defined path.
When I finally got to the creek crossing I knew I was close. I got excited and was looking across the creek instead of at the drop-off below me and slid down the hill. The funny part was that they warned you about this exact spot before the race.
From here I had under a half mile to go. I hit the clearing and bolted across the finish. Thankful that this terrible idea of mine was all over.
Final Time: 1:03:28
I was hoping to run this race in under an hour. Clearly I missed that mark. But all things considered I’d say I did the best that I could given the factors going into this run. Honestly reflecting back on this race I should have slowed way down. Racing this was not my smartest idea.
2015 Time: 54:59
