Bolder Boulder

 

5 am the morning we planned to move all our “big stuff” (furniture) over to the new place I woke up and had Dan drop me off at the bus stop.  I took the special “RUN RIDE” bus up to Boulder for my race.  I felt pretty lame leaving when I other people were coming over to help us move our stuff.  But truly, I am not very strong and never do the heavy lifting anyway… still felt lame though.  This goes to show you just how bad I wanted to do this race again!  I had no running friends with me (last year I had 4, plus Dan and the girls) but I enjoyed the scenery as I rode up to Boulder and tried to calm my nerves.

I trained pretty hard for this race.  I followed a Nike plus training program I got from my ipod application, I had done runs up to 10 miles in length and many tempo runs, sprints, and strides.  I felt really prepared.  The bus was late an I got to the start line only minutes before my wave was leaving, so I jogged up to meet my group in the DA wave.  I didn’t really feel ready when the gun shot and we all started running.  I felt fine during the race, I did a much better job this year conserving energy.  I didn’t go out too fast and did ok at maintaining my speed, although it tapered off towards the end.  I ended up with a time of 52:34 which is slower than last year by 17 seconds.  I am disappointed but that’s ok, I still had fun.

I’m embarrassed I didn’t perform better, especially with all the hassle of me racing on our moving day.  Like I said, I trained really well (better than last year for sure, when I hadn’t even ran the distance before the race).  The only thing I can think of is that about 2 weeks before the race I donated blood.  I didn’t think twice about it affecting my running.  But when I went out to run 7 miles the next morning I felt really light headed.  I completed my run but had a really hard time maintaining the pace I had been doing for months.  After that run I went home and did some research.  I found that professional athletes are often discouraged from donating by their coaches because of the decrease in performance.  In fact, some athletes have put in extra blood before an important event to increase their performance (it’s illegal).  Apparently when you donate blood you are robbed of hemoglobin containing red blood cells that deliver oxygen to your muscles, which makes you perform poorly until they have restored.  I read that your hydration is back up to normal after a couple days but your red blood cells take 2 months to replenish.  That seems like so long!  I am NO doctor and I don’t know if any of this is true but… it’s my excuse.  I just haven’t felt good running since my donation, and it takes way more effort than it did to maintain a faster pace. I wonder if it effected me so much because of my size.  I barely weighed enough to qualify to donate but they take the same about of blood from every donor, so the percentage of blood taken for me was higher.  Has anyone ever heard of this?  Is it all in my head? 

I hope I feel back to where I was soon, because I plan to do my first 1/2 marathon in 5 weeks.  Sorry no pictures, I didn’t want to carry a camera with me during the race (although I saw some people who did) but if you REALLY want to see me racing (mom) you can go here to see the ones they took of me.  I tried to copy them here, but they have them protected so I cannot.