Before I went to Taiwan for the iron-distance race, I signed myself up for some torture here at home the following weekend: the Tucson 5000. For some reason, I had this sick compulsion to sign up just because I knew that running a 5k balls-out a week after ironman is the last thing my legs would want to do. Not sure what that is about, but I figured this little workout would shock my body out of “yay me I just did an ironman so now I can chill out” mode back into work mode.
It was indeed torture but I think it served its purpose. Although I was well off my PR ( I ran 19:53) and struggled to run an average of 6:20 pace, I finished feeling like I was going to vomit and knowing that I sure as heck wouldn’t have run that hard on my own that day if I hadn’t been on a race course surrounded by hundreds of friends. And I replaced memories of ironman with painful, more recent ones—thus forcibly shifting myself from post-race recovery mode to pre-race work mode for the next one (see my last blog for dets on these different phases). Ouch.
Reward for mom post-race: my princess delivered her very own Mother’s Day card.
And kisses.
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