1hr postal

Today was the Utah Association USATF 1 hr postal racewalk. Basically, walk as far as you can in 1 hr (judged) and compete against racewalkers all over the country in the event via mail (hence, "postal").

Coming off a relapse of the mystery illness and a bad head cold, I knew this was going to not be ideal. However, I had hopes of maybe getting 10K? If I'd felt good the last few weeks this might have been attainable, given that I did a 28:50 5K at the end of October. But, I didn't feel good, and it wasn't attainable. That's the bad news. The other bad news is that I was hoping for 22 laps of the Olympic Oval (442m/lap) as a secondary goal, and I didn't reach that either. Almost... I was at 409.8m of the 442m, so I missed my secondary goal by only 32m. Oh well.

The good news is that I had no weird soreness in my legs at all until about 45 min into the race, and even then it was quite mild. Afterward at breakfast, sitting didn't hurt much at all! I'd say very slight discomfort (1 of 10?), and it's hardly hurt at all the rest of the day, though I have been doing housework, cooking, etc. Saturday chores!

So while I am disappointed at not reaching my goals, I am very happy that I'm feeling better, because that means that maybe I will be able to reach my goals next year. And maybe I can train again. Besides all that, I enjoyed time with my friends and I was able to do a very hard 1 hr workout for the first time in a long time. That's all good.

My lap times gradually got slower as I went, despite my best efforts to the contrary. I tried to keep a 2:39 per lap pace (6 min km) but after only about 7 laps it was clear that wasn't going to happen. Then I focused on my secondary goal, and at about the 6K mark I knew that was going to be close as well. However, I worked VERY VERY hard the whole race - my average HR was a whopping 168! That's very high for me for a (basically) 10K race. So I know I gave it my all. My all just wasn't very fast today. But like I said, I'm OK with this, because my mystery illness relapses seem to be farther in-between and less severe and shorter. I'm thankful for that.

Oh, I almost forgot to post my total distance: 9691.8m. It hurts to type that, but I am hoping for better in the long term.

Garmin data here.