Walker North Country 2015

Well it happened, I have finally run a marathon and finished DFL but I finished. I debated long and hard running the Walker North Country this year but I couldn't resist doing it again. After all it was my Birthday weekend, what better way to celebrate a birthday.

Here's the story, I am still plagued by Posterior Tibial Tendon pain and when I run any trails it tends to get pretty painful. Well the Walker North Country has trails and I had pain.

I signed up for the early start as I figured I might need the extra time. Saw Karen G. at the start, turned out she too had signed up for the early start. We decided to start running together, I warned her I would be doing my Galloway run-walk and she was welcome to join me. We did it maintaining a sub 12 minute pace until we hit the trails after mile 7,  I told her I would be fast walking the trails as I feared the trails would cause my foot to get a bit unhappy and by the time we left the trails around mile 12, the foot was hurting. Anyway, back on smooth trails we got back into the run-walk rhythm. I was hoping the foot would calm down but it was throbbing as we hit the second trail section which did me in. Karen took off during this section, I had felt bad that she was staying with me and kept telling her she could take off so was happy to see her go as she was running well. I switched shoes at mile 19 1/2 (Hwy 34 crossing where Karyn was waiting, she had again run the 10k and it sounded like she enjoyed herself) with the hope it would help. I had started the race wearing my New Balance 980's which I had hoped would protect the foot as they are about my stiffest pair of shoes.

Switching shoes (to Altra Repetitions) helped but stopping would have been the best option. I basically hobbled the rest of the way and may have been better to not have switched, regardless I continued to hope that I could get the foot calm which never happened. I eventually walked the final hill, ran through the finish and thought to myself that I bet I just finished in last place. Turns out I did,

All things considered an enjoyable day even with the foot, it does confirm that I need to stay away from trails although one thing that did work that I tried was wearing a compression knee wrap and I was thrilled as I had no knee pain on the trails, granted it was more hiking than running but that is still the first time since my knee surgery that I was able to be on trails without knee pain :-).

Oh well no permanent damage was done and I think it still counts as a marathon finish, now it's on to the Ultra Loony Challenge at TCM.