Halloween Haunting 10K - 47:38

I went for a 7K run on Wednesday and felt pretty good. I wasn't looking to do a fast run, but more of a "get the cobwebs out of the system" run.

So this morning, I felt reasonably good. 4 days off since Wednesday. A week since the Columbus Marathon. Minimal horseback riding in the last couple of days.

The Halloween Haunting is a race where participants are invited to dress in costumes. Jenny put a lot of work into the Energizer Bunny costume. I was going to 'race' (rather than run) the 10K, so I wasn't interested in a costume. But I brought along my Batman costume just in case.

As it turned out, the winds were fairly brisk coming out of the west, so I knew my time was unlikely to be a Personal Best (or anything close) -- so I changed into my Batman costume and was going to just go out and do a good run. Anything close to 45 minutes would be awesome. I would be disappointed with anything slower than 50 minutes.

We started the run and I actually felt quite good. But it didn't take long before the pace was starting to wear me down. Here are my splits:

4:24
4:32
4:32
4:40
4:48
4:47
4:46
4:55
4:53
5:01

Total time: 47 minutes and 30ish seconds -- 4:45 per kilometre. As you can see, I got progressively slower. The legs were sore by the time I'd done the first 5K lap. I wanted to stop 1000 times, but didn't. Instead, I just slowed the pace.

So the challenge is that my legs feel like lead. My breathing is fine and I'm not overheating, but my legs are on fire with pain. Jenny and I had a chat with Sue Safadi and I'm going to arrange a visit to the physiotherapy clinic where she works. I'm also going to get a doctor's appointment and get some blood tests done to see if my iron level is low (or high) or something.