On tuesday, I ran 12km. It was the furthest I had run in three months. I should have been elated. In just over two weeks I’d moved ‘the maximum distance without much pain’ mark from 5km to 12km. Yet, rather than elation I felt frustration. I’m in the danger zone, the place where the mind starts to get greedy and ambitious, as the legs start to return to some semblance of form. Strangely, when I wasn’t running at all, I was more accepting of my injury. Now I just want it to be gone, and to get back to the level I’d worked up to in May. Having had a taste of running, I want to run full throttle. I’ve started to look longingly at the training plan my coach in KL drew up before I left. I’ve reprinted it, and stared at it several times as if some form of osmosis was going to make me run faster and longer. That’s the training plan that was designed to get me to a PB in the Chevron City to Surf Half Marathon this coming Sunday for which I registered on May 1, just before my ITB decided it had had enough and was off for a summer vacation.
Well I’m months away from being able to adhere to such a plan but I think I may not have lost the chance to do the City to Surf event altogether. I changed my registration to the 12km race over a month ago, not really expecting to be able to participate. And even as I set off on my pre-physio run on Tuesday, I was certain that I wasn’t going to go to the start line in Perth city centre on Sunday. But then, my legs let me go, and I made it to 12, though 13 would have been impossible as my leg had started to hurt after over an hour on the road. I can only make it to 12 by concentrating very hard on fixing the anterior tilt of my pelvis which was most likely at the root of my ITB injury.
My husband is running on Sunday too, though yesterday he discovered that I’d registered him as a woman, so maybe he’ll get disqualified before he gets to the start line. Oops. My 11-year-old daughter is walking 12km with a friend. Billed as the largest running event in the southern hemisphere, I’m curious to see what an Australian event is like. I’ve never been at a race outside Asia and I’ve a lot of questions that need answering.
For example, will I turn blue at the start line or should I dress warmly and discard old clothes en route? The forecast is for rain so I may be wet and blue before I start. Will I need to take a drink or energy chews – I ran Tuesday with neither – but having never mastered the fuel issue in Tropical climes, I now need to address it here. Do Australians stop to take selfies and update their Facebook statuses only minutes after starting the race? Will there be long lines for the portaloos? Will I actually make it to the start line? More importantly, will I make it to the finish line?
Hopefully by Monday I’ll have answers to some of these questions, if not all. I will not be racing, no matter how eager my brain may be to do so. My legs (and my lungs) simply aren’t ready. I will try running though, whilst doing a pelvic tilt that hopefully looks less weird than it feels!
