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Lots of thoughts in my head in the hours (and day) since this race. I am an over-thinker by nature, and so I will continue to think about this for awhile, even though I know there's really nothing to be gained from it. I know that I ran my hardest yesterday. I know that I run best by feel, and so I did not look at my pace at all during the race. I was running a PR effort. As the miles passed by, I was constantly assessing my effort and pushing harder if it felt at all possible.
My lungs did not feel strong during this race. Usually, I can make it through at least half the race before I start to worry about my lungs fatiguing, but this time I was really working for air the whole race. This worried me, but I hoped it was just because I was running an extra fast pace. I ended up using my inhaler at mile 4 and again at mile 9. While I hoped that my lungs were struggling because of a fast pace, I worried that I was not in fact running that fast, but I made myself think positively throughout the race and pretend that I was on track for a PR and that all I had to do was push a little bit harder. And then a little bit harder.
I was struggling hard for air in the last mile as I made my final push to the finish line, but I kept telling myself it was almost over and I would make it. It was a huge disappointment when I rounded the final turn towards the finish and checked the time clock as I sprinted for the line. The clock read 1:33. Even though I had been afraid I wasn't running a PR, I definitely was not expecting my time to be that slow, especially not for the effort I put in during the race. My watch only had me at 13 miles on the line and normally I would keep going to 13.1 but this time I just didn't care. My time was not at all what I wanted, I was barely getting any oxygen, and I just couldn't find a reason to care about being under the official distance.
My lung haven't struggled that hard on a finish line in a long time. And when I raced in September, I felt like I was almost ready to run a half marathon without using my inhaler during the race. Yesterday was a slap in the face to those thoughts. I did worry when I got sick a few weeks ago that it would weaken my lungs, and I'm assuming that is what happened here, combined with the cold air yesterday. Even though I got rid of my cold in record time, there is still an occasional cough, and the cold air is always harder on my lungs. It was in the 40s yesterday, so the logical explanation for my lung trouble is the cold air plus my lungs still being weak from the cough.
gotta love asthma-attack finish-line face
It's hard to move on from a goal without achieving it, but I always knew that was a possibility with this goal, especially after I got sick. I now have to switch gears to marathon training so I can PR the marathon at Pittsburgh in May. I am not going to give up on PRing the half marathon, but it's going to have to wait. Even if I could find another race soon and afford to pay for it, I'm assuming the cold air would compromise my lungs and keep me from the PR again anyway. I might try for a race in early March, but if not, I'll have to wait til next fall. And I'm just going to have to be ok with that. It's already been 5 years since my race-verifiable PR and 3 since my watch clocked a PR on a course that was long. What's one more year...?
The only up-side to this asthma race-failure debacle is my legs don't feel like they raced yesterday. So I'm probably not going to rest quite as much as I had originally planned to after this race. I am going to try to back off a little bit just because I have been training hard lately and I know my body can only take so much, but I probably won't back off mileage,, just maybe skip some of the faster workouts for a little while. Famous last words, right?
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