Breakdown!

This morning was the Garden 10 Miler. I finished in 1:25:18, which is a huge improvement over my 2005 time of 1:34:59. It was the worst race I have ever run though. This is how it went down.

I asked Harsha to help pace me, so I didn't wear a watch. Started out too fast, which I can normally recover from. I was walking 3 miles in and feeling like total crap. My breathing was worse than it has ever been, which resulted in horribly heavy legs. Note to self - use the inhaler! At that point, Harsha started giving me irritated looks. It persisted throughout the rest of the race. There were a few really great moments of him trying to motivate me, but the majority of the time I felt he was disgusted with my need to walk (he says differently, but that is what it seemed to me while in my asthmatic haze). Around mile 7, he swears he told me we could still make 1:20, however I heard "we probably can't do 1:25." So I totally lost all sense of drive and was too focused on my wheezing breath and tired legs. As I got closer to the finish line, I realized I was coming in right at 1:25, which was a huge shock to me. Since I didn't wear my watch, I figured I would be closer to 1:30.

So I suffered a total breakdown this morning during my race. I know I can run a whole lot better than I did, but I am still proud of my time. Despite all the struggles I was dealing with, I did it. I made my back up, things aren't going real well, goal. Haven't seen the results, but I know I finished 355 out of around 1400 people. I should be extremely happy, but the experience is outweighing the happiness right now. I need to kick myself in the butt and redeem myself. I know I am better than this, but it was a very hard run for me today. I will never run without my watch again though! Good thing, I just have a few weeks until the next race. I'll scrape myself back up for that one.

One good note - my great friend, kicked ass! She beat me by over a minute - YAY