Reflections on last year's "big" race

This weekend is the annual Virginia Ten Miler in Lynchburg. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that there's a part of me wishing I was running it. It would do me no harm in doing it, unless I hurt myself, but I'd be missing miles I need to build for the marathon. It would give me a chance to work on speed for a longer distance, but I already have that planned in a 30K next week.

Anyway, I realized on this morning's run that it had been more than a year since my big race of 2006. Here's what I wrote on my MySpace page that day after:

"After nearly three months of intense training, it all came down to one day. I don't really have too much to say about the race right now. It's tough to put into words. I easily beat my 1:30 goal and finished the 10 miler in 1:23 finishing 150th out of 500-plus runners. To put it simply, I left it all on the course. There will be no marathon for me this year, but I don't really care about that right now. My goal at the beginning of this year was to do the 10 miler and I did it. Depending on the condition of my knee, a marathon may never happen. I'm not giving up hope, but I'm not going to be stupid and hurt myself for the rest of my life either. For now, I'm enjoying some off time from running, eating whatever I want for a couple of days and being thrilled at the accomplishment of running 10 miles in the time that I did."

Oddly enough, I didn't write about running again until early November when I finally broke 8 minutes a mile in a race. A lot has changed since September 2006, and a lot will continue to change in the coming weeks. Just wait until I tell you about my tempo run I had this morning ...