I've been away too long

Oh so many races to catch up on so let's not waste time!

After the New Year's Day race in Rosslyn, I decided (with help from my Dr.) to take the rest of the month off to rest my left knee. It had been very painful to flex and stairs were a bear. However, I'm happy to report that with rest and a lot of Alive the knee is much better and I even feel comfortable running without the knee brace.

I returned to the roads and trails on February 1st for the DCRRC Capital Hospice 3K. Yes, that's right...the wimpy 3K. I didn't feel up to a difficult 12K while still recovering from an injury. Plus, it was icy in places that day so I wanted to minimize the risk of slipping. I saw a lot of the regulars there for the 12K...Karsten Brown(finished 3rd), Charlie Mercer(finished 4th and is running really well), Bill Stahr, John Way, James Moreland, Jay Wind, Kirk Gordon, Karen Young, Bob Platt, Jon Palks, Sharyn Gordon, and of course Shirley Sameshima. There were 219 finishers for the big race.

There were only 26 races in the smaller 3K, the most notable being Ted Poulos, Jim Scarborough (the race director), and Bob Gurtler. Thanks to my Garmin GPS watch I can tell you that I took 5 walk breaks (yes, sad I know for a mere 3K). I ran until just after going through the tunnel, where we encountered about 20 yards of ice. My heart rate was 141 when I took this first break so I certainly could have pushed further if not for the ice. Another ice patch a 1/4 mile later resulted in another short walk with my heart rate at about 134. Knowing I had taken it easy to this point, I pushed myself harder the second half of the race. I was ahead of a 6 year old boy that I really needed to beat (Kelvin Roesing) and I was trying to catch a woman that was within 100 yards of me for the entire race (Liz Santos) . Bob Gurtler is always a target for me but he finished well in front of me this day by about 4 minutes. I tried to pace myself so that I could give a really hard push at the end so I could pass Liz but the finish line came up too soon. Literally. According to my watch the course was only 1.73 miles. Anyway, Liz ended up finishing in 21 minutes even with me 9 seconds back. Little Kelvin finished in 21:23. Ted won the race in a pedestrian 12:39, as he is coming off some type of surgery.

All in all, I was pleased with my return to racing. I averaged around a 12 minutes pace and my max heart rate was 148. My average heart rate was 135. I hope to get that up to about 140-145 as my training continues.

Until next time.