Day 4,292—Shippey Update: Going Slow so I could Finish—

       I would have likely done more to update everyone on the race had I finished with a better time and my run was updated correctly on Strava and Garmin, but that was not the case. When I started the last leg of the final loop, I began to see the finish line in my mind, and I was going as fast as I could. I was trying not to look at my watch, but when I gave in and looked at it, all I saw was a black screen.

        I was first outraged because I changed the setting so it would alert me before the battery died. Also, this morning, it indicated that I had 41 hours of battery on the mode I set. I was tempted to turn off the heart rate to get more battery life. After all, I was planning on wearing my watch over my clothes anyway, but I thought I was being too cautious, so I made sure to bring my charger. I would just plug it into a charger once I got the alert that the battery was low, if that happened.

        This is only the second time I have lost an activity on Garmin, but every time it happens, the system that is supposed to save before it dies has not worked. This morning, I was focused on getting all my stuff out of my car so I could start unpacking and trying to upload my file if it was still on my watch. The last time this happened, I corrupted the file when I did another run before I imported the activity. I saw the file on my watch when I went to history, but by the time I plugged it into my computer, it was showing the map of the route I did a day after the race.

        This time, after I fully unpacked, I tried to get the file from the watch. I was able to do that, but when I tried to upload it to Garmin, it didn’t work, so I tried on Strava, and it worked! I was happy it worked, but I was annoyed I couldn’t edit the file so that it would have the actual time. I was also annoyed that all the comments from the race that I got on the manual upload on Strava wouldn’t exist anymore, since now I needed to delete the file to correct my distances on Strava. I decided I would take screenshots of the comments and put those in the pictures of the Strava activity. I still want to add more distances, but I can do that through a manual activity after I delete the Strava post.

        I added at least a mile to the run by going the wrong way on the first loop. When I looked at other runners' distances on Strava, they were around 102.x miles. I know my watch was on track to be at 104 miles, so I am confident my actual distances is between 103 and 104 miles. I am realizing now how this is probably the least interesting post, but all of this has consumed my thinking since the race. I will do an actual race write-up, and I have pictures and videos, but I was just not even able to think of that stuff while I was so focused on fixing this.

        The other thing that made this a little bittersweet, if I am being honest, was my time. I am happy with my accomplishment in completing the 100, and I knew how difficult it would be since I have been dealing with this injury. I tried to focus on recovering before the race, which meant I couldn’t train as much, and it also meant that I was still injured on race day. I was trying to remember if I got injured on my birthday run or if I was already injured before that. Basically, what has caused the pain and aggravates it is when I trip on my right foot, my left leg goes hurling forward to catch myself before I fall. This sudden movement causes a lot of strain on my whole leg, and now, when that happens, I have so much pain in my left leg that I can barely put any weight on it.

        This run, I was going at a good pace without my poles, but after tripping a few times and aggravating my leg in my near falls, I had a decision to make. I just completed two loops and was a little over 40 miles on my watch. I needed to change clothes and recalibrate. I knew I was going to have to do something different that break ended up being close to 30 minutes. I was exhausted and frustrated with my situation. I knew I was going to need to slow down and be careful to finish this, but I wanted so badly to have a decent time but I had to accept that I wasn’t going to be fast today but I could still finish if I played it safe.

        I had just been talking to another runner about the two times I DNFed on runs: the Farmingdale and the Mamba. Both times I had gotten stomach sick, I hadn’t eaten that much and was dehydrated. The only choice I had was to sit around until I started to feel better, but both times I was so frustrated I just wanted to quit, so I did. Now I think about those times and accept I could have sat for an hour and still finished those races with plenty of time before the cutoff, but I let pride get in the way of me trading a DNF with a slow finishing time. I had learned my lesson, so I knew there was only one thing I could do, and that was to go slow and finish this thing. The rest of the race, I felt like apologizing to everyone and explaining my situation, “I have to go slow because I am injured!”

        I know that wasn’t what anyone truly cared about, but I felt like I had disappointed everyone. People who were there had been following me on Strava and had watched my race videos, and now I am turning in a slow finishing time. I didn’t talk that much for the next 60-plus miles. When people talked to me, I was polite but not as warm as I usually am at races. I am always happy to see people from other races, but when I was having this slow race, I just wanted to hide from everyone, but that wasn’t an option. Now I think about how ridiculous I was being, but at the same time, it makes sense. I try to remind myself it isn’t about the time but the individual effort that you put into a race, which is easy to say when you normally run faster, but it was a hard truth to accept now that I was dealing with a slow finishing time in what was the best condition ever for the Shippey. I am going to look back at this and feel happy with myself, but accepting the slow performance was harder than I thought it would be. I knew it was a real possibility considering I was still dealing with the injury, but I was just hoping it somehow wouldn’t be an issue. I was thinking that way because there was nothing I could do about it.