My worst race ever!

So, I ran my yearly Sunflower State Games race. Last year I did the cross country run at a course that more resembled an obstacle trail run, and I thought that was a bad run, but this year’s governors cup 10k was horrible.

First, I have to say, I have been training everymorning at 6am, on a heel with plantar fascitis.  That in itself, feels like crap during and after a run, but I figured I just run a 10k that I did pretty okay in, I figured this one would be the same. NOT.  I know now what I didn’t do enough which was acclimate myself to the evening run time.  Because the run was a 7pm, when the sun was still high, and it was humid as heck, with a heat advisory going.  Still, I figured if I did feel tired, I would just run it as a training run.  Yeah so that didn’t happen either

So we head over to Topeka for the 7pm start, I had drank a ton of water and felt I should be okay. I was for about 2 miles.  While I took water at ever stop, I could feel my legs not running as hard and kinda just trotting.  By the time I had reached 3 miles, I was thinking I should have only done the 5k, but it was half over.  My time was way off and then I could feel myself getting cotton mouth needing water. Unfortunately at 4 miles, they only had Gatorade and I took it,  I was thirsty! About a half a mile later, they did have water, but I could feel my whole body just shutting down. I actually walked for about 2 minutes until I could get back into my stride.  5 miles now and all I could think was I have to finish this race, I never not finished a race.  As I turned our last corner to head back to the park where it all started, I realized I had actually been out on the course for an hour! I slowly trotted back in, grateful I could finish and devastated by my time 1:07! Oh well, I figured, at least I finished.

As I cooled off, I realized my body was broke down, when we got home I was extremely cold, tired and nauseous.  I put myself to bed thinking I should have acclimated more to the running at night. So the lesson learned is if the run is at night, run at night time! Hind sight is 20/20, and I learned my lesson!

Tags: 10k, heat, running