Day 150 - Things we do for love...

...of running.

The story starts out like this:

Looking pretty fresh at the 14k mark in the Limestone Half.

I signed up for the Limestone Race Weekend Half Marathon on a whim back in February. I ran my first ever 5k last year at this very event, and I figured that running a half marathon at the same event this year would be a good way to show myself how far I'd come in a year. Something about coming full circle, blah, blah, blah.

And then it takes this turn:

The half marathon and 5k events are run on the Sunday morning of the race weekend, but there is also a Trauma 10k that is run on the Saturday evening. The Trauma 10k is run in support of the trauma program at Kingston General Hospital, and is meant to race awareness of year-round preventable causes of trauma. It is organised by a KGH nurse. Incidentally, this same KGH nurse runs our technical skills OSCE during the peri-operative/acute care rotation that I just finished.

When 10-12 of us were sitting, sequestered, waiting to start our OSCE in the simulation lab, this nurse asked who was running the Trauma 10k. She scanned the room to a disappointing response, and when she looked at me I mentioned that I was running the half instead.

A little voice - was it her? Was it a classmate? Was it the voice inside my head? - laughingly suggested I run both.

Now, I'm not totally out of touch with reality, and I know that these little voices probably should be ignored, but I thought the little voice might be onto something.

So I found myself, on Saturday evening, walking to the start line of the Trauma 10k, $45 in hand, and walking away with a bib, Larabar, and race t-shirt. I figured I would run this one slowly, since I knew I'd be running the half the next morning, a mere 13 hours after I'd finished the 10k.

As it turned out, a large group of med students were running the race. I was easily one of the slowest, with my easy pace through the hilly Kingston streets. Trust me, I'm not fast even when I'm trying to run fast.

Katelyn and I finish our first half in September.

Yet, wiping mayflies out of my eyes and spitting them out of my mouth, I managed a personal best in the 10k. My previous personal best was a rather unimpressive 1h7min at the Wolfe Island Classic in July 2012. I finished this race, without even trying for speed, at 57min, covered in sweat, mayfly carcasses, and saliva.

With that knowledge in mind, I was certain that I had sabotaged myself for the half marathon. I must have run too hard, and I would certainly not be able to pull out a personal best on Sunday morning. I acknowledged to myself that running two races within 24h was ambitious, and that I didn't need a personal best time in the half marathon to make the weekend a success.

I went out for pizza with friends and fell into bed without even laying my running gear out.

The next morning, I woke up, rolled out of bed, threw on some gear, mixed some Nuun, and ate two pieces of cold pizza. I collected my chip, lined up in the chute, and ran another personal best.

Many pounds lighter, after finishing my second half on April 28.

Yes, at 2h14min, I beat my personal best in the half-marathon. 

I recognise that that isn't a fast time, but it is 13 minutes faster than I'd run the same distance on a significantly flatter course in Ottawa this past September.

(Apologies to those I told I had achieved a personal best by 15 minutes; I thought my September time was 2h29min, but I checked the results of that race and found that it was actually 2h27min.)

There is no moral to this story, and there is no punchline. 

Just a moment of gloating after two personal best times in two distances in less than 24 hours.