Well, today I can tick off two of my to-do boxes in life. I ran in the
Cathay Pacific Half Marathon (21Km). Considering that I've never even run a quarter-marathon (~11K), I can successfully tick the boxes next to quarter and half marathons now. I was training for this a bit before the holidays, but once they arrived, my training drastically died down. At least I was still participating in some sports after the holidays which probably helped a bit. Anyway, myself and Paul from the office decided we'd run in this one about 3.5 months ago. James (another friend from the office) decided to join up last night. James has run a few of these before but Paul and I never have. We were pretty worried about it and thought we might have to cut it off at the 11Km point. We didn't exactly prepare the best since we haven't run in weeks, went out to the bars pretty hard on Friday night, then ate Burger King and
Dominos on Saturday. At least I drank a good bit of water during the week to get me hydrated.
The actual race wasn't too bad for the first half. We went at a fairly slow pace but felt pretty comfortable. Things started to get pretty bad for all of us around the 14Km mark. I wasn't really all that tired from a
cardio perspective but my legs and knees were in a lot of pain. This point was a little bit hilly which did not help matters at all. We carried on and then the worst part for me was the final 2Km. I can say that I jogged the entire way although it wasn't very fast. I finished the race in 2 hr and 20 min. which is certainly not a time to brag about, but the fact that I did finish and did not have to walk made me really happy. My legs are still killing me and I'm sure my knees will not function tomorrow, but I did it. I'll have to train a bit more for the next one. We'll see how long this takes me to recover.
Nate,
ReplyDeleteI tip my hat to you. Maybe uncle Dave Wottle's running abilities showed up in you and Braden (Braden just did a 5k run this past week) -they are certainly not expressed in my genome - I have never been able to run more than a mile even when I was younger.
2 hr. 20 minutes isn't bad. Impressive that you jogged the whole way despite not running much leading up to the race. All the hiking and stuff you've been doing probably helped you to stay in shape. You should keep with it and run some races with Jenn and I when you get back to the U.S. She wants to run a marathon next October or something, but I doubt I'll do that. Maybe another half marathon sometime but for now I'm sticking to 5ks. Sounds like all is well. I'll try not to forget your birthday next week and give you a call.
ReplyDeleteBraden - what kind of times have you been getting in the half marathons? I'll plan on training more to get my time down and we'll have to do one back in the U.S. sometime or you can use it as an excuse to come here.
ReplyDeleteNice job, Nate!!!! You are a great example to us all!!!
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