Look who's back?
Did you all miss me?
Been a long time since I've been here, so get ready for a little recap.
When I stopped posting here (which is around the end of November apparently) I was a happy camper, having left the 200's and never going back and stuff.
Well... turned out a bit different. In November I was away on "vacation" (which actually was a trip to organize a sports tournament, which is a lot of work, but also a lot of fun), and while on vacation I didn't have too much time to go running. Which wasn't that bad, seeing that we had to set up the whole venue of the tournament, which is old fashioned manual labor, and I had to patrol the courts everyday during the tournament, so I got my workouts in. But next to no running. Once back home I figured I could just put on the running shoes and pick up where I left off.
Not a good idea, my knees began to bother me in a 15k race in december. Did finish the race but my knees were not feeling good. Tried to rest them and don't go running too much, but they never felt better. So I went to a physical therapist, and it turned out I had Iliotibial band syndrome, or runner's knee. Bummer.
My first half marathon was scheduled to take place in march, so an injury was not very welcome.
Luckily it wasn't that bad and my PT let me run short distance and have me doing various strech exercises at home.
During the time I wasn't able to run as much because of the injury (which also included the holiday season by the way
) I gained weight pretty fast, resulting in me weighing in at 213 lbs in the first few days of 2014
Took me about an month to let my knees get better
I had some weeks left before my HM and tried to build my training distance to a point where I would feel I would be able to finish the half marathon.
I got to that point just over a week before the race, so decided to go through with it.
So the day came I was gonna run a half marathon. I was in good company, my dad was gonna run the 10k race in the same event, and my sister would also be doing a HM (mind you, she's run a few before).
The first seven k's of the race my sis and i ran together, but after that she told me to go ahead (I'm a bit faster than she is, normally).
So from that point on I ran alone, and when I say ran alone I mean alone in a sea of people. I'm not sure how many participated in the HM, but it 's somewhere around 25.000 at least.
I began to feel tired after a while and the last two miles I hit the wall, the wall everybody talks about. My pace slowed by a full minute per km during the last few miles, but I kept a pretty good pace and at least I was able to still keep running. I passed quite a few people who were walking. I wouldn't let myself do that, even tough it sure was an inviting thought, to walk for a while. In the last mile I saw my dad among the spectators and that gave me a little bit of a boost. My sister was running a steady pace since I left her and wasn't that far behind anymore, without both of us knowing it, otherwise we would have finished together.
But I did finish. It was a great sight to see the finish line and finally cross it. My time was 1 hour 57 minutes en 15 sec. Secretly I was hoping for a sub-2hour time all along, but getting to the finish line was the main objective.
My sis finished only 15 secs behind me.
I was pretty content with my accomplishment and I should be, but let me tell you, the two days after the race my legs already started screaming whenever I came close to a staircase. Boy were they sore (taking walking like a pirate to a whole new level).
Since January I was able to loose 13 pounds and now I'm slaloming over and under the 200 lbs mark for the last few weeks.
I'm OK with that, I'm doing more weight training now and I'm getting ready to start training for my next goal: the marathon.
So that's where I am at now.
Hope to find some time the next few days to read up on your diaries.
stay strong my friends!
:
