Sunday, April 20, 2008

Race Day

Today was the day of the Lawrence Half Marathon. As you might remember, on Chad's birthday I mentioned that he was in training to participate in this event, which would be his first race longer than a 5K. Nine weeks ago around his birthday he was already running 7 miles on the weekend, and even though he was only running 2-3 times a week because of a sore knee and bad weather, he increased his mileage every weekend. Then came the Shamrock Shuffle in early March. This 5K was on the river levee in Lawrence, where the ground was not only extremely hard and frozen, but also very uneven, completely with bike tire ruts and lots of holes. The terrain was so rough, by the end of the race Chad had a sore foot and knee that hurt even more than normal. He completed his next couple of weekend long runs of 12 and 13 miles, but his knee pain got so bad he struggled on those last few miles. It didn't help that after we won the Davidson game I went running across the room and jumped into my husband's arms unexpectedly, buckling his already sore knee. He decided to taper off the running a little earlier than normal to give his knee some time to heal, so he ran very little during the last 4 weeks, hoping that his knee would be better by race day.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday Chad came home from an out of town business trip and went to bed early, feeling like he was coming down with a cold. He woke up with a terrible sore throat and stuffed up head, and ended up staying home in bed for the next two days! He still had hopes of getting better by today, but considering he still couldn't breathe very well as of yesterday afternoon, he decided that breathing hard for 13.1 miles wasn't really going to be doable! Apparently, this half marathon just wasn't meant to be.

The good news is that Chad's knee was already hurting before he actually got sick this week. I can't even imagine how infuriating it would have been if he had been injury-free and training hard, only to get sick right before the race. With the double whammy of illness and injury, he didn't feel nearly as bad about not running!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We felt badly for Chad too, especially because he had worked so hard to train. Maybe this is God's way of telling him the bike is best! Chad, we know you're fully capable of the 13.1 miles, even if you didn't race! We were there this morning (Jake just couldn't resist doing the 5K!) and definitely were thinking about you!

Beth said...

Maybe I read the post wrong, but it sounds like Chad WAS doing half-marathon weekend runs of 13 miles? That sounds like plenty to me! Too bad though, because race days are so fun! Just know that having knees for the next 30 years and not doing long-distance running is worth the trade-off, even though it might be emotionally disappointing at the moment. (And we all know how Emotional Chad is. ;)

vwiese said...

missed you Ricks, it was a great day to run but I hope you Rick is feeling better.

kjl said...

Beth--you're exactly right--Chad did do a training run of 13 miles, so he practically ran the half marathon--just not on race day!