I tweaked my knee during 5 Peaks Golden Ears so I took it really easy for the two weeks leading up to the Vancouver Sun Run. The Sun Run was my first dapple into road racing. It was my first 10km road race and takes place downtown Vancouver. It's a pretty cool event in my opinion - I know a lot of avid runners judge the event because there are so many people who come out for it; this year 51,419 runners took part in this years event.
May 9th was the race. I woke up, ate my normal pre race breakfast (oatmeal with blueberries and apples) and unlike most other races where I pack up a bag (I should say over pack my bag) and drive to the race I suited up in what I'd be running in; White Lululemon Racer Back-T, Lululemon shorts & my road runners and headed out my door to meet up with B-Rad. I jogged over to his apartment as part of my easy warm up. The 5 minute jog across the city was amazing! The energy was electric in the city eith hundreds upon hundreds of people gathering in the city to be active! I loved it. The weather was prefect sunny sky, cool light breeze and not too hot. I got to Brads and he informed me we had to go meet some humans that he works with at Blenz. They never showed so I proceed to bug him that he actually doesn't have friends...sorry. After a couple pee breaks we realised it was go time and we were late. So we bolted to the starting area.
The line up to start was out of control and we ended up in the very back of our time section which meant we would be on a mission to avoid the mad build up of humans. The advice Brad gave me prior to starting; run hard, the 1st km is a slight down hill, try to get on the side walk before everyone else to avoid as many people as possible. Keep in my zone 3 heart rate, try to hit the 5km mark in 20 minutes (Burrard Street Bridge) and then suffer the last 5km to hit a finishing time in the low 40s.
The race went to plan for the first 5km - I started down the road on a total mission to pass as many humans as possible I pretended I was playing a video game trying to avoid the turtles and using the sidewalk to get around people. I arrived at Burrard Street Bridge in 20 minutes - SWEET!(5km which was probably more like 7km because of the side to side human evading). Only 5km of pavement pounding left and I had made up enough ground that I wasn't having to evade nearly as many people.
The next 3km went pretty well I could feel the burn beginning to build up in my legs but I was still in a manageable amount of pain. At about the 8km mark the person in front of me came to a sudden stop and I had to quickly bound out of the way to avoid hitting him - it was during this sudden movement that I felt an extremely sharp pain shoot into my left knee right inside the knee joint. My next steps were extremely painful. Everything inside me told me to stop because this wasn't right. But there was no way I was going to stop with only 2km left in a 10km race. I know I can run this distance...I do it multiple times in a week (I would have been embarrassed to stop). So I kept running at a considerably slower speed. I think my pace time increased by over 1 minute & 30 seconds per km for the final 2 km. Each step was more painful then the last so I started to count down to myself how long I had left starting with 10 mins, 9 mins, 8 mins...this helped because I knew there have been long runs where I'm counting down the time left for hours not minutes;) Upon finishing I knew I did damage but was happy I finished. Here's where I netted out on my first "road race" - if you could call it that.
Total Time - 43:53
Age Group Place - 33/3507 (68.19%)
Overall Place - 953/51419
Chip Pace - 4:24
I'm not sure what my overall place was for all females but there were 22306 females in total. The website lists the Top 100 Women and the 100 place women run a 43:22 so I missed top 100 by 20 seconds.
Maybe next year.
Since the Sun Run I have take time off running to let my knee heal. I have major inflammation in the bursa's in surrounding my knee. So physio, ice, yoga and rest have been my remedy. Its been a week and a half and the pain when walking is gone but I still have pain when I sit so I have been sitting at work with my leg up on my desk to the dismay of my boss;) Hoping to be back running in another week! Woot
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