Race Results: Livestrong Half Marathon

Another overdue race report, Livestrong was back in February.

A month and a half later its' hard to remember exactly how the day was.  Jennifer and I ran this together and I had decided in advance I was not going to go all out.  I had (have) a nagging glute/hamstring injury that was bugging me and I knew pushing myself would not be good long term.  The weather was fine, I wore shorts and a t-shirt and my Spartan hat, along with the water pack.  I got at least 3 shout outs for my hat, which was pretty cool.  Jennifer and I ran together for about the first 10 miles until the killer hill.  Then she dropped back and I powered through to the finish.  I was feeling pretty good until The Hill, then my knees started to hurt and my hamstring was pulling.  I knew if I walked I would hurt more, and running faster actually hurt less (weird). 

Final time: 1:54:58, avg pace 8:47/mile, 137 place in my age group

I did not have a goal time going into this, but figured I could finish in under 2 hours.  My primary goal was to finish and then take a couple weeks off to rest and heel.

I did see a sports medicine doctor 2 weeks later.  He looked at 2 things.  First my glute/hamstring he judged as pulled or mildly injured but that the scar tissue was irritating and that was what was bothering me.  He flat out said "I'm not going to tell you not to run, it won't do you any more damage if you do, and you probably will anyway."  Well put.  So he said to take it easy and keep running as long as it doesn't get worse, eventually it will just stop hurting.  The other thing was my B-b-b-bunions.  ~shudder~.  My feet belong to my mother and they ain't pretty.  For this he suggested I see a specialist for an assessment.  He said if I wore high heels I probably would have had surgery already, but for now I'm ok.  If they get 'worse' I should seriously consider surgery which will keep me off my feet for 3-4 months and is no guarantee they will be fixed.  They took x-rays so I will go back in 6-12 months and see one of the guys who does the surgery for an evaluation.  So, that's that.  I wasn't surprised by anything he said.  I went home and laid out a running plan for March that kept me to a low amount of miles and cross training so that I would not over do it.