After being away from the running scene for over a year, today I’m finally back doing an Aquathlon Relay. Yay!
I have injured my back sometime in January 2015, and it took me almost a year to get it all healed up… mostly because I’ve been naughty and got it injured again several times last year before it was fully healed. So, I practically didn’t run at all during the year of 2015. My last race was the Ekiden SCMS 2014, which was over a year ago!
This year, I promised myself that I would start running and working out (and lose some weight! I gained about 7kg last year! Yikes!) again, like the way it used to be a few years ago. So I started with this race.
I have only been doing light yoga and gym stuff for the past year, so I thought I should start easy this year. So when Shinta offered me to do one-half of the Aquathlon Sprint Distance Relay, I gladly accepted it…. That means, Shinta would do the 750m open-water swim, I’d only be running 5k… Yep, totally doable.
So we signed up… Team name: Needle ‘n Thread.
But then, a week before the race, I started to develop a migraine. The type that when my head moved, the sharp pain hits me. I couldn’t even walk without getting all dizzy and hurting. After a few days of the migraine, I went to the doctor. He prescribed me a few pain killers and told me to stop all exercises until the pain was all gone. So, no running for me…
The day before the race, the head felt a bit better. I tried to lay off the pain killer, and it seemed to be bearable. So I got ready for the race… After all, it’s only 5k. I thought, worse come to worse, I’d walk.
But then, around 3AM, I started to get a stomach ache… Surprise, surprise, I got diarrhoea! Oh, crap… (pun intended). I was still going to the bathroom — in a port-a-potty! Ewww! — a few minutes before Shinta’s flag off. Shinta bought me a bottle of 100plus, which I gulped down immediately… crossing my fingers it would be enough to keep me from dehydration… and somehow keep my pants clean!
But after all that drama prior to the race, the run itself was pretty nice. A little bit of the headache came back, but after a short walk, it went away, and I could go back to running. The sky was overcast and I ran slow, so everything was kinda nice, actually. And the stomach went silence after Shinta’s flag off… Yana said it might just be my nerves. Maybe.
But I’m very, VERY happy that I could finish the race today.
And very happy that there was Shinta, Yana, and Slesta (who had finish their races much earlier than I did) cheering at the finish line…
More photos in Aquathlon 2016 photo album in Flickr.
