Excuses!

Excuses? I'm not usually one for making them up and like to take responsibility if things don't go exactly as planned. But I do have a few that I'd like to try... I went fishing on a herring boat and we caught a more than a few fish and the captain was so happy that he wouldn't let me off the boat because I brought such good luck. Actually he did let me go but it's a great picture that I wanted to show off from a recent trip I was on.
On Sunday I ran the 5k at the Fredericton Fall Classic. My final time of 21:02 was decent enough and I placed well but was only slightly faster than my race on July 1 over 2 months ago. You would have thought that there might have been some slight improvement given the training that I'd put in. It appears that the 10 day sea-trip layoff was just too much to make up for.
Maybe, I didn't run hard enough, although it felt hard during the process. My splits were terrible with a fast 1st kilometer in 3:58, followed by a steady decline with splits of 4:06, 4:18 and 4:28 before finally getting my act together a little bit for a final k in 4:09. I don't remember many little details like Thomas can seem to come up with during his races. The weather was near perfect around 10C with little wind and I had a couple of people to draft off during the 1st 2.5k where we were running with the 10k crowd. The turnaround near the 3k mark required a couple of sharp turns and we then ran back against the flow with very few people around me. I was not passed after the 2nd k until about the 3.5k mark when one female high school runner put some distance on me (separate 5k HS race). I almost caught her in the final k when she actually took a little walk break to look around for her competitors but at least it gave me a target to shoot for. My final stretch of the run was good but I was left with the feeling that I had let down a bit too much in the middle and did not push like I might have. Oh well!

Meanwhile, Trevor had a great race setting a personal best and looking good for his upcoming marathon at Mount Desert Island. It's a tough but beautiful and rewarding course and a very well run race that I know he will totally enjoy with his family. We did a nice little warmup jog before the race and talked about him not being sure of how he was going to do. I told him all the training could surprise him with an unexpected result since he's done the work in recent months. Nothing shabby with a nice shiny PB is there Trevor?

However, things went downhill for me immediately on finishing when my lower back seized up just steps after stopping. I hobbled over to the massage tent for treatment which helped but did not alleviate the pain. Where this came from I have no idea and now two days later it's still with me and there has been no running. How can you go from running fast (sort of) to being barely able to walk!? My usual remedies of beer and ice cream have had only minimal effects but I'm trying my best.

Meanwhile there is a 1/2 marathon coming up in a few more short weeks, not to mention a little holiday trip to visit the two sons in Ontario and probably another work trip bouncing from boat to boat. Life does go on! Here's hope the back clicks back into position soon and I'll be back to normal (whatever that is) sooner rather than later.

Have a good week as I'm heading for the freezer now!