Racing

Last week I said I was excited to race so that I could test myself and get a gauge on my fitness level but apparently that must have come from how I felt as a road racer or something. As things have tended to go in this return to running, the racing experience was not like I remember. Part of this change has come about because of personal development but a big part of the change is the fact that the race is on the trails, and the discipline, trail running, for me, and I think many people is really a different sport than road or track running, perhaps even cross-country running. I don't know that I can articulate it accurately but when I toed the line on Sunday and started racing it felt strange to me, perhaps its because I automatically got into road racing mode but was running through the forest and this clash didn't compute. Maybe it was the fact that I was wearing a number and this mass of people were going to be charging though to forest that seemed odd. Although the North Shore trails are very close to the bustling city, to me, it is still the Forest and distinctly separate, so being part of a large group of people, a mass of humanity charging through the bush with our numbers, water bottles, back packs, and other fancy equipment somehow felt 'off' to me.  This is possibly the small town boy in me talking. I did happen to grow up where I could run trails and dirt roads for miles and not see another human.  I don't mean to sound as though I have any contempt for such an event, it is just a very different experience between having a throng of people running through the streets and buildings and running through the trails and trees.

My race itself was cut short by my own choosing at about halfway, but I suppose i'll start from the beginning. We started off at Cleveland park and headed up to the Grouse Mountain Skyride parking lot via the road then headed down the powerline dirt road over to the Baden Powel trail. The first ~25mins was more or less up hill the whole way and I stuck with Mark Bennett through this section creating a bit of gap on him with the short downhills, while who I assumed was Adam Campbell was up ahead and a kid I recognized from the roads from UBC up ahead of him. Once I reached the top of this climb I let it go on the downhills which I discovered last week was a strength of mine and caught up with Adam 5 or 10mins before the Lynn Creek bridge aid station. We ran together and chatted for a bit but after crossing the bridge I stepped on a sharp piece of gravel right on the ball of my big toe. I actually don't remember the precise point but it was very sore and I found I couldn't really use my big toe much. I tried to keep the pace going for a while but once we passed the start line of the Tender Knee race, which is about halfway, I decided I had better throw in the towel since I could get a ride to the finish from there. The thought process was that I could grind out the second half of the race adjusting my stride and falling off the pace and potentially seriously injure myself, or I could drop out and be running again in a couple of days. Being that this race meant little to me and being able to simply go running on a daily basis means so much to me the decision was an easy one to make. Perhaps mostly because of this rationalization I actually didn't care much at all about dropping. However, after thinking about it, it is partly the different feeling about racing on the trails I described above and my very different mentality about running I now have which gave me this lack of disappointment with dropping out. I can't really say for sure because I really have this ongoing sense of discovery with running these days.


That said, I had a few goals in the back of my mind for the year but i've decided to throw them out the window for now, aside from the one of getting and staying healthy. I'll continue to do a hill repeat workout mid-week because in a masochistic way I enjoy it, and it is the biggest bang for your buck workout you can get, in my books anyway. On the weekends I am just going find some beautiful places to run.