Queens' Half

So - wow. Went out to Queens this morning and ran a pretty crappy run, even considering the heat and lack of training. Finished in 1:43:27.

From the start, I could tell it wasn't going as smoothly as planned. I was trying to do it as a training run and, in fact, was going to run with Gorgeous, but couldn't find her at the start. No worries: I came with the Engineer, who was planning to run around an 8:00/mile pace. "Alright", I thought, "This shouldn't be too bad". Well. From the first mile, my legs felt tired. Really tired. Which is strange, as I hadn't run for two days before. In fact, I had been so tired the day before that I had actually gotten about 10 hours sleep! Now, given the heat and such, the tiredness was understandable to a point but this was supposed to be a fairly easy pace for me. My lungs were fine. No problems there throughout the whole race. It was just my legs. I couldn't get into a rythym and my back started hurting.

We took the first mile at 8:19, the next at 7:50, the third at 7:35, then slowed down a bit again, as I knew that the Engineer had aimed for an average 8:00/mile pace. We kept running together through the first two out and backs. I'm pretty sure he was right behind me at around mile 8 but I was getting that feeling that, if I didn't speed up a bit, I would just walk off the course and call it a day. At this point, the heat was getting to me a bit. I drank too much water on the course and my stomach felt sloshy. I really think the key to this summer running is not to be in air conditioning unless you can help it. I should have insisted on no air last night!

After about mile 9 or so, other people were feeling it, too. My back was feeling much better - I think because I had sped up a bit, changing my stride. Since the injury, my stride has felt a bit different and my gluts and back have been tighter and hurting more. Passing people on this part - and the partial shade and breeze - made it feel better. Rounding out to mile 12, I was happy to be almost done and happy that I wasn't feeling too badly. Interestingly, my legs felt no more tired at mile 12 than they did at mile 1! Pushed the pace a bit the last mile or two but I didn't have my watch so I don't really know by how much.

Not an epic fail - my quad feels ok and my other parts are hurting only slightly. Still not the easy training run my time would indicate.

Hopefully, I'll have better luck on intellectual endeavors today!