Mississauga Marathon 2014: Post race

A random assortment of post race stuff. If you somehow missed the epic race recap it's here.

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My poor knees! My legs felt surprisingly good Sunday afternoon/Monday, but my knees, yikes. I was starting to think the 'running will ruin your knees' contingent were right all along. But by Monday afternoon they were significantly better, and they now feel normal again.

Assorted ice packs to give the knees some love.

Monday afternoon was when my quads joined the party with some lovely DOMS. It was definitely a fun couple of days of dreading stairs. Although this, surprisingly, wasn't my worst post-race recovery - that honour goes to the first time I did Around the Bay, didn't train enough for the race, and then couldn't walk for three days. With this one I wasn't moving real fast, but walking felt OK. If the zombie apocalypse had happened Monday morning I could have escaped the shamblers, but fast zombies would have caught me no problem.

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Monday I came home from work to find a surprise in my mailbox. Thank you Amy! Slapped that sucker right on the car (after I worked up the energy to tackle the stairs outside the front door. stupid stairs).

Yes, I'm one of Those People. I earned that sticker, damn it.

And my TRX trainer brought my flowers! How sweet is she! Especially considering I haven't been to class in over a month, what with tapering and such. I'll be back, it's almost tank top time and the guns need some love.

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So the photo company for the race has a page with infographic type stuff, including some statistics. Nothing too exciting except for this:

You can find this by clicking the 'photo' link on your sportstats results page and then choosing 'more stats'.

Since there was no timing mat with 5k to go I assume they are calculating that based on the last timing mat at 25k. The numbers make sense to me if they are talking about the final 17k - we passed a lot of people in the late stages of the race, and I don't remember being passed more than a couple of times. I'm rather pleased with this; even though we ran a massive positive split (our second half was six minutes slower than our first, yikes), the course past 25k was really tough thanks to that wind. I remember a lot of people really struggling and doing the death march as we got past 30k, and I had to ignore them to avoid getting sucked in. I've been a death marcher at Around the Bay, it's no fun.

Also, one of the three people who 'passed' me in the last 17k? AMY. All our splits through the entire race were identical except somehow she hit the timing mats at the end a tenth of a second before I did. Sneaky, Amy, very sneaky.

Amy up to no good, clearly sneaking across the finish ahead of me. I'M ON TO YOU.

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Looking at my finish line pictures tells another story. Note the guy in white:

I managed to nip him at the end and finish ahead of him. And possibly wrecked his finish line photos (hopefully he got a few without me being all ME! YAY ME! in them).

Again Amy and I with the freakishly synced up form.

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So what's next. Still resting and recovering. That ache that developed in my right thigh during the last 2k of the race is still there. Getting better, but it's worrying me a bit. Considering heading off to the doctor to rule out a stress fracture if it doesn't resolve in the next couple of days - the symptoms don't really fit (my Dr. Google degree suggests it's more likely a mild muscle strain, along the same lines as what I had in my calf pre-Chilly half), but after what happened to Krista Duchene I kind of don't want to take any chances! I definitely won't be doing any running until my leg feels 100%. I got my bike out and cleaned up tonight, so if biking doesn't aggravate whatever is up with my leg and the weather cooperates, I might try some easy rides over the next few days.

Big Red is ready to roll (obvious bike name is obvious)

I also find myself doing a whole foods/clean eating sort of thing right now. It wasn't a deliberate choice, but after the heavy carb load before the race I am carbed out, man. It's been all salads and protein and good fats since the race, and I'm going to stick with that for a while since it does feel better to eat that way. I'm also supplementing calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin C for recovery purposes.

Big lunch salad.

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What's next? I'm signed up to run Sulphur Springs in a few weeks, but that will be a run for fun and not a race per se. And I have the Ride for Heart 75k at the beginning of June, again for fun. After that, not sure. Kind of depends on this leg thing, so I don't want to make any plans until I know what's going on there. Once that's settled it'll be time to start thinking about short term race goals for June, and then the fall and fall goals. Stay tuned!