This year's route was the same as last. Up the long and steep ski hill, down on the other side and around the mountain, and up again and down again - you know, a typical trail race! This is a nice trail. Lots of flats, the hills are not that frequent but sure make up for it by being long! There was a few wet spots freezing cold water -wet feet on snow and ice is not the most pleasant thing, but it's all part of the fun.
Things were going great - fantastic actually! Until we hit km 9 or so. I turned to tell Lisa I had bad news - I could start my knees being unhappy, my calves and hips getting tighter. I always know what that means -extreme knee pain. This year, my left knee! Why does this keep happening to me? I don't know - things had been going so well for a couple months! Man oh man! The one good thing, we are at km 9 or so - which is better than last year! This happened at the 3rd km!
Well, I'm not a quitter, so we keep going - running short bouts, walking short bouts. I stopped for second to try and stretch and see if that would help, and wished I had Advil or Tylenol - which I left in the car - when two girls stopped to see if I was ok - told them I was fine, it was just my IT - low and behold, she offered me some Advil! God send! Took an Advil and hoped it would start working quickly. No such luck - the Advil didn't really do anything.
We kept going and going. At one point on the trail, you cross the road to do a loop on the other side. I grabbed a smores and kept going. This side is more hilly -more ups and downs - it's also more slippery - this is where the 50km are doing their 5 loops - so the snow has been trampled more which means it's now icier. As I was going down a slippery section, I fell right on my bottom, thankfully managed to miss my tailbone - breaking it twice is enough thank you very much! - that hurt! So now, my bum and left wrist hurt. Great. At least this is taking away from the knee pain. I turn to warn the 2 guys that have caught up to us - too late - one of them almost fell. A lady is now coming - I try to warn her, too late - BOOM! She's down. Well, I sure am glad we don't have to do this loop again!Off we go and continue our journey. I was hoping there would still be some smores when we got to the aid station but no such luck. Grab some cheesies and continues our journey. At this point, we are close to the 17.5 finish line. I'm in quite a bit of pain, but I'm not willing to quit. I'm not yet at the point of where I was last year - meaning I can still run little bursts - a couple of hundred meters at a time. We decide to keep going. The last loop went as well as it could in the shape I'm in. I've learned to run and stop before I get the stabbing pain in the knee -and so I can handle the pain. My right knee is also hurting at this point - when one side goes, the other soon follows as it can only compensate for so long. We did finish the course in 4 hours and 15 minutes! Better time than last year - not as good as I wanted it to be, but still happy and proud I got it done.
I was hoping this year would have been different from last year. It just wasn't in the cards and that's ok! I was out there running. I could've been sitting on my couch doing nothing to stay healthy. I will now take a month off from running - give my body some time to heal and my muscles time to loosen up. Hopefully this will help with the marathon training that will be starting in January.
