Build Up And Let Down

Someone told me about a  race said to be held near the Lake Gardens on Saturday.
Totally unadvertised. Totally by word of mouth.
And I'm such a sucker for small races.

WW was out of town. And my parents offered to look after the kids so I thought, what have I got to lose, eh?

I haven't been to the Lake Garden in a while. It's literally a stone's throw from my office.  I could actually almost see it from the window of my surgery. It's a wonder how something so close can be so far.

Anyway, I arrived at about 7 am. No signs of any banner. Or any racers. Or Any organizers.
Just the usual Saturday morning crowd.
I decided to be optimistic. Maybe it was too early. So I decided to recce the place with a good 1 round warm up around the whole park.
As I made my way into the park, I could see some of the hardcore runners finishing or almost finishing their runs. That's how hardcore they are. Finishing up at 7 when the rest of the normal people ( read: me) are just starting up.

So I ran that 2-ish mile loop. Still no sign of any race. No matter. I decided, alang-alang dah datang kan? Might as well go on another loop.

Now I've been running indoors for weeks. That's not counting the usual 1K I do with my kids on Sundays in another park.
 So after sometime of running stationary, running on a road feels liberating.
Now I'm an advocate of treadmill running just because in the current situation I'm in, I have no choice.
But if you ask me, really , truthfully, seriously : I'd rather be running out.

There's just so much to see and so many runners to beat. Did I just write that? Beat? I meant meet.

So did I care  when a  RELA volunteer manning the road told me that there WAS to be a road race that day but it was ONLY for school kids ? Nope. I was just having too much fun running and soaking up the cool weather.

So by the time I knew it, I've done with my 3rd round. I wanted to do more but I promised my mom I'd come back early. And anyway, the sun was getting fierce.

I was elated to see I've done 7.45 miles. A bit surprised. But Happy.
But then I checked my pace.
8.34 min/mile?
That can't be right.
There's no way I could have pulled that off. That's almost 12 freaking kilometers, man.

Then I checked my laps.
lap 1 : 10.44 min/mile
lap 2:   8.05 min/mile
lap 3:  8.53 min/mile
lap 4:  7.03 min/mile
lap 5:  9:41 min/mile
lap 6:  9:34 min/mile
lap 7:  8:04 min/mile

What the hell? Some of the lap readings were ridiculous. Totally off.
There is no, absolutely no way I could have pulled of 7:03 min in a mile.
I would have collapsed of an asthma attack.
Even when I did my speed sessions on the treadmill set to 7:42 pun macam nak pitam.
And 8:04 min/mile? 8:05? Equally beyond me in a 7 miler.
Not to be modest folks but for me to pull off these numbers would be magic.
Or a myth. Or a fairy tale.

So I was bummed the whole day wondering what went wrong with my foot pod or my Garmin. I tried to Google about false pace reading vs foot pod reading vs Garmin vs road running vs treadmill running and all I could register was tra la la la la yada yada yada german france urdu bla bla bla ( too heavy reading on a Saturday).

In the end,WW theorized that maybe my foot pod was  loose ( hence the false reading)  and I need to calibrate both my road running shoes and my treadmill shoes.

Bummer.
Secretly I wanted to sooo much to believe that my Garmin was telling the truth and I really did manage to run 7:03 min/mile without even realizing it.
Sigh. A girl can only dream.

So to test the whole loose foot pod theory and calibrating whatsit, I ran on the treadmill today for my strides, foot pod fastened tight, at 8:10 min/mile and I got a slight minor asthma attack on the first lap.
Theory confirmed.

Dang.

It's like being given this and told, " Go on, eat it. It's only 50 calories. Promise."

And then after it's been gobbled off , you're told, " Oh did we say 50? We meant 5000 calories."


Ok then. Back to reality.
And training.

Oh by the way, I did polish off that ice cream cookie.
And it was d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.