No Sacramento Marathon for me this year: Did Not Start (DNS).

The short story is that I got what I think is an extensor tendinitis that sidelined me for most of November and I thought it was wise not to attempt running a marathon with such a gap in my training.

The long story is a bit more complicated. 3 weeks after my last post, I caught a cold and did not run for a week. Then, as I was resuming my training, I might have overdone it a bit running 24 miles over 2 days and I started filling a slight pinch on the top of my right foot. 2 days later, I put on a brand new pair of shoes for a short 5 mile run at tempo pace. The pinch kept on growing with the run to become a sharp pain by the end of the run.

After a couple days of slight latent tension in the foot, I did some research and self-diagnosed it as extensor tendinitis. I took as easy as possible and ran only short distances once a week to test the foot. By Thanksgiving week, I was able to run again but that was too late for Sacramento.

It is tricky to pinpoint the root cause of my injury. I think it is a combination of too much running too fast after being sick and the new shoes. I might have been able to run through it if not for these shoes.

No need to tell you those are going on ebay and I am now on the hunt for a new pair of shoes. In the mean time, my current pair still has 200 miles in so I am running exclusively in them.

I am now thinking of running the Napa Valley Marathon on March 6. It fits nicely in my schedule (KP San Francisco Half early February and Santa Cruz Half in April) and it gives me enough time to train correctly for it.

Seven, that is the number of seconds I have now put between my half marathon PR and the 90 minute mark.

Seven, that is also the number of minutes I shaved from last year’s PR I recorded at the same race last year.

Seven, that is how old I felt while running free, and full speed, in the final stretch of the race.

For my third participation to the San Jose Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon, I had set my mind on the 90 minute mark and decided to join the pace group at the start. Soon enough though, I had to let it go as the pace was feeling too fast for me and I did not want to implode later in the race.

In place, I settled on a 6:55 min/mile pace on my watch, knowing it was off by some at each mile, and cruised for the first 9 miles.

At mile 9, I knew I was a bit behind optimal pace. Mind games were on full time and I had thoughts that I would not reach my goal. Still, I was feeling good physically so I upped the pace to around 6:45 for the next 3 miles.

At mile 12, the clock was showing 1:22:50 and while pushing hard and struggling mentally to keep the pace, I was able to do the math and knew it was possible if I could just push a bit harder.

I must have hit the runner’s high at the same time because I ran the next mile in 6:38 and went under the 6 min/mile mark for the last stretch with the finish line in sight.

I could hear the speaker counting down the seconds and see the clock ticking so I sprinted all out to finish in 1:29:53 for a new PR. The amazing thing is that, as of this moment, you can actually see it!

Now, I am really pumped and I feel I can run a BQ in Sacramento in early December so back to training.

Like last year, I made it early and fresh. I got into my wave on time though a bit late so I was at the back going through the line more than 3 minutes after the first runners in the wave and 5 minutes after the “elite” runners!

I felt very strong for the whole race passing a lot of runners along the way. Though, starting 5 minutes behind the fastest runners means that I did not see that many people running at my pace except for the last mile. That last mile ended up being the hardest and I had to reach deep into my reserves to stay on pace.

At the end, I finished 70th in 1:33:43. That is 5 minutes faster than last year.

Based on my race results this year so far, I decided to give another shot at qualifying for Boston and registered to run the Sacramento marathon for the third year in a row. But first, there is the San Jose half marathon in October with the 90 minute mark in sight. We shall see.