You can’t always get what you want… and the good side of it

The day was born as a race day. Martinslauf 2015 has been an event I’ve joined ever since I came to Düsseldorf and today would be no exception.

The day didn’t feel like race day however. The demons? They were many:

• Business travel the whole week in Dublin, joining the Web Summit 2015 tech conference and keeping up with work at the same time
• A short beer here and there during the Pub Summits – I’m not used to alcohol any longer no matter how few it is
• 60K in my legs during the past 7 days, including a long run on the weekend and touristic routes in Dublin during the week
• Deficient and insufficient sleep
• No proper tapering food during the days prior the event

The grind came for me and I lost. I felt generally tired, without the required motivation to run.
In any case I’ve set myself to go and try the best I could put in. The PB to beat was 1h31m52s and after all the intervals training in the past weeks I was confident that with the proper preparation it would have been easy to beat it. Well… the proper preparation was not there 😐

I felt good at start, legs rolling with a good and fast pace. Past Km 10 my legs started to get really heavy, an overall numbness taking over and an amazing need to… just… stop! I did a few times actually, walking for short periods. I promised myself in Lisbon however that I wouldn’t quit a race again, no matter how painful it would be. So I endured it and set the target to start running after 30 sec whenever I’d stop to walk.

I finished up in 1h33m47s which is a great time considering the conditions. I guess one cannot always beat his own best self and has to live with the fact that there are good and bad days.

I always however like to look into the positive side of things. What was good in today’s race? What was the bright side of it?

• I got together with the community, a fantastic group of people that live running with joy and love a good event
• Most of my running mates have joined the race and made me feel that diversity is fantastic. We had German, Portuguese, English, Indian, Israeli, Romanian, Croatian, Italian and Senegalese nationalities.
• I thought of my debut as a pacemaker last year and how Ashley endured through the pain as well. He was omnipresent during the whole race. He’ll be getting a call later today.
• I met Cris Roata, a casual commenter in this blog which has an amazing blog Cook It Fit dedicated to healthy foods for getting you fit.
• The weckmann and the alcohol free beer at the end were great!

Always look into the bright side of things! Face your challenges and keep up.