The end of the year

Well, the end of 2014 is almost here. Unless there's something that really perks my interest, I've run my last race for the year. And that might be a good thing. A few weeks ago, before my last 10k, I developed what I think is plantar facitis. It was pretty tender, and I thought I had done a good job of rehabbing my foot in time for my Thanksgiving 10k run. Not so much. I did good up until about mile 4 when things started to hurt a bit. The last mile was mind over matter, doing what ever I could to not think about the pain in my foot and finish strong. I still ended up with a very respectable time of 52:06, with an average of 8:24/mi (according the the official results, my watch had me a bit faster average). I'm very pleased with that, and will most likely submit that for my BolderBoulder qualify time and that should put me in an early D wave (of which there are 5). That's about 5 and a half minutes quicker than my first 10k in Boulder this past May.

So anyway, had a run yesterday. It wasn't a timed race. I was a little disappointed in that, cosidering that it was a route though downtown Madison, around the capital square, a really good goody bag and a race fee that I'd expect to have timing involved with. But what ever. It was fun. It really just made me focus on me, which was good. Timed myself at a 23:58, 7:54/mi average. So not too bad. And having not run since Tuesday, and the race on Saturday, I'm ok with it. Felt a little funny in the beginning, but really started to feel good going up the hill with a little over a half mile to go.

But what a year this has been. My first 10k, about a race a month, the goal of running a full marathon in 2016 in Hawaii with a high school friend set, times going down, and just getting out more than I have. I've returned to raced I did in my first year, entered into new ones. Bettered my times, and pushed myself to just get better. It's really amazing.