Planning a run and running the plan

Tel Aviv 10 km

Last Thursday I had to undergo a dental operation that involved cutting open my gum cutting out two root canals that had somehow managed to impact into a sinus cavity and as a result I get getting infection and an abcess was growing , one and three quarters hours later I was out of the dentist with six stitches in my gum. So for the last week I have been unable to train and perhaps this was one of the hardest things was the fact that I could not train in any way for seven days, and I was planning to run the Tel Aviv Half Marathon this morning.

I decided that the best thing was to run the 10 km instead of the Half Marathon and that I would run with the 60 minute pacer so that I would not tax my body and treat today as a ease back into training rather than risk my recovery.

It is a interesting and different to run at a defined pace that is slower than you are capable of, I really started to enjoy the discipline of keeping myself in check and running at pace and the mental battle not to go faster, rather than race.

It has been a very frustrating week and I was feeling bad, when I left my friends who were all running the half I trudged to the start of the 10k, but learning to deal with these feelings is helping me change into what I hope is a better runner and athlete.

My time for the 10k 59:06 , a good well planned and paced race, so I took some comfort from the fact that i stuck to my plan and have not had in face or teeth pain post race