Silverstone FLHM

[Daryl]

Hi there Andy,
First off, I want to thank you again for providing Alfred and I with a ride to Silverstone. You made our day so much easier and less stressful. A million thanks.

As for the race, I agree with your commentary for the most part. The course was bland and it was not too exciting. Although, this was my first race, so I thought it was great regardless!

Unfortunately, the saturday before Silverstone, I had injured my knee during a 12 mile training run. It was the first time I had run that far. I talked to my cousin who is in sports medicine, and we concluded that I had strained my lateral collateral ligament in my knee (connecting the fibula to the femur). I kept off it all week in attempts to be ready for sunday, and it repaired itself for the most part, though it still felt weak on sunday.

I bought a knee brace (under the recommendation of my cousin) in hopes to prevent further injury at the race. I ended up with pain for only a day or so after the race, so it was better than the last time. I think I will stay off of it the rest of this week as well. I am hoping that as I become a more experienced runner the pain will whither away.

My finishing time ended up being 2:03:44. I am pretty happy with that since 2 hours was my goal. I had only run 12 miles in that time the weekend before. Unfortunately, the fact that it was my first race combined with the fact that I had never run that distance before made my time worse than it should have been. I drank too much water before the race and dispite a toilet stop at quarter 'til 12, I had to stop ASAP in the race to let more water out. I ended up pulling over to the side after a quarter mile or so. That added a couple minutes to my time. . . literally.

The other problem was that I had way too much energy left at the end I think. I basically sprinted the last 0.2 mile. I should have spent that energy maintaining a faster pace throughout the race. I guess that is the price I pay for not running that distance before the race.

Overall, I had a great time and I look forward to signing up for some more races. I think I am going to postpone any marathon running for a year or so. I can't imagine 13.1 miles being the half-way point for anything!

Thanks again, Andy, for making my first race a very pleasant one!

Daryl

PS- Cool webpage!