Athens Half Marathon Report

Elemental Thing #1:  running.
Ran my first half-marathon of the season.  I love the Athens Half or AthHalf:  running on the streets I know so well, being greeted by friends along the route, being super close to home.  This year's weather was perfect for a race.

I felt that my training had been modest so I was modestly hoping for 8-minute miles.  So I went out and decided not to let the runners passing me in mile one lured me into chasing.  Even holding back the horses, I ran a 7:38.  At that point, I didn't know what that meant.  After my last two disastrous marathons where I bonked at 18 or 20 miles, I didn't trust that I had gone slow enough.  So I made plan and revisions of plans for the race as I was racing, all considerations on the conservative side.  I finally decided that if I felt good running 7:30s up to mile 7 or 8, I'd pick up the pace.  Ended up running a bunch of sub-7:30s but waited until 10 to really try to run harder.  Started running 7:08s, then a 7:02 for God's sake.  Finished very strong running negative splits.  Ended up running a 1:36, which ain't anything to write a blog about (even for me that is about four minutes of my PR) but it is better than expected.

Too bad I've seriously pissed off the peroneal tendons in my right foot.  Because exercise is essential to prevent me from killing other humans, I scheduled an appointed with Horizon PT yesterday and met with Brett today. He hooked me up to all kind of cool things that plug in: ultrasound, a thingy attached up high on my calf that made my foot rhythmically twitch with another thing that make the foot area of the tendons tingle.  And a tuning fork to check for a stress fracture.  Anti-inflammatories in a patch with magnets is strapped to my foot as I type.  I ran for 45 minutes today.  I'll see the King of Horizon tomorrow, Jimbo, for him to look at my running on slow mo.