Pain

Wow. This is painful.

I finished the 21km in 2:42:35.7. That's really slow, but considering my weight and the fact I'm about as far from a long-distance runner as one can get and still be in reasonable shape, I'm happy. Heck, I'm just happy I finished. For those who want to know, I finished 218th out of 222 in my category (Men 20-29), 1201st out of 1213 for Men, and 1759th out of 1785 total. Considering I didn't particularly train for that event and my pre-race nutrition was atrocious (yesterday I had Wendy's and then battered fish and poutine... yeah), I'd say I can probably do a lot better. Also, one of my friends who generally runs a lot faster than I do only had 20 minutes on me--a minute per kilometer--so I did pretty good.

It was hard and... it wasn't fun or not fun, really, it was just... something you do. Now I just need to start training for a full marathon. And then I can just retire. Well, retire from plain running, at least. Maybe I'll more to ultramarathons... and I need to do a triathlon at some point... or maybe an Ironman. Actually, I know I want to do an Ironman someday. Not anytime soon, but still.

Anyway, I'm gonna go take a nap, now. 21km is pretty taxing.

Edit: I forgot to mention... for some reason, my 10K time was only marginally slower than my best-ever 5K. I'm wondering what hypothesis is the right one: I didn't push as hard as I thought when I set my personal 5K best, or I can sustain a "good" speed for long periods of time, and I just need to train so my speed increases. I could stand to run faster and more efficiently anyway, but... it's one of those things that make me go "hmmm."