Milk Run 2011

After the marathon I took a bit of a break and now have been slowly building my running back up. This time with some of the ideas from Ken Bob Saxton who has run over 77 marathons and has been running barefoot for over 20 years. I have been doing shorter runs and on gravel as much as I can. This way when I run, I will land much more gently to save my soles and at the same time save my knees.

So my training has consisted entirely of less than 10k distances since the marathon. With the hot day and the reduced training, I knew it would be a slower Milk Run 10k race for me. The race started at 9am so the asphalt on the roads didn’t feel too hot on the feet. The sunlight and humid air however, were a major factor for physical exertion. I think I may have started a little too fast with the thought of getting the race over with and having ice cream at the end. By the time I had run about 3k, any concern over getting a good finishing time fell from my list of priorities. At that point my pace had slowed a lot and I simply wanted to finish without walking it in. A couple of kilometers later and I was only concerned about self preservation. I was feeling so uncomfortable in the heat that I was running faster in the sun so that I could get to the shady spots where I would slow right down and give myself maximum time in the shade before having to run in the sun again. In the last 3k I didn’t care about running in wet clothes and headed for every spraying hose that the nice citizens of Lindsay provided. I forced myself to keep my legs moving and finished the race not looking at the clock only looking for anything to cool me down. I ate my first two dishes of ice cream just to try to cool down. The next two however, were for pure indulgence. I didn’t feel any pain in my feet or legs during the race, only heat fatigue, so I was happy about that. Once the results got sorted out I ended up with a time of 52:56. I was happy to see that I hadn’t run the race as slow as I felt I had, but I was still a lot slower than my best 10k race (47:08). So I felt satisfied that at least I set a PB for the number of dishes of ice cream I ate even if I didn’t for my 10k time.