This was a race that I was really looking forward to. I've gotten in some good training over the last couple of weeks and after going through three miles in 16:40 during a five mile race, I feel like I could break 16:30 with a good effort. The race took place at the Hendersonville YMCA and ran around the neighborhoods through there. I didn't know much about the course but it turned out to be really tough.
I was trying to scope out the competition before the race and wasn't sure if I would have any company. When the gun went off, I went right to the lead. The first mile was mostly downhill and I had about a 10 second lead at that marker. I thought I would have a little bit of a bigger lead over the guy, so I tried to push again and keep the hammer down as long as I could.
The course was constantly up and down with steep inclines and declines and it was really hard to get in a rhythm. I have trouble with these type of courses but I still tried to throw down a good effort. My lead was slowly increasing but it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. After two miles, I tried to push even more and tried to keep a vision of seeing the clock reading a 16:20ish type time as I crossed the line.
When I entered the final straightaway, I wasn't certain what the clock would tell me because of the rolling hills. However, I was certain it would read sub 17. As I got closer, I could see I was well over 17 minutes, which really frustrated me.
I finished in 17:36 with a win. I don't know how in the world I ran so slowly. I went through three miles in the Thanksgiving race much faster than this and during this race, I was running hard. I spent the rest of the day being frustrated because I don't know how I could run a minute slower than my goal. In 5ks, you can be coming off a really bad sickness and still run within 30 seconds of your "healthy time" so a minute is just unacceptable.
However, a few days before this race, I started feeling sick and it got worse after the race. This turned out to be the strangest sickness I've ever had. For the next month, I would be completely fine during the day and like clockwork, my fever would climb over 100 with flu-like symptoms before bedtime. A week after the run, I ran a nine miler with the Hendersonville Running Club and even though we were running just under 8:00 pace, I was dead.
That next month, I cut my running in half and lost about ten pounds. I ended up going to the doctor and my blood work showed that my monocytes were way elevated. He then recommended that I see an internal medicine guy for additional blood work but I never got around to it. After about a month, the sickness went away and within two weeks, I unfortunately gained my 10 pounds back. Wow, that was probably the longest excuse for a bad race ever.
