RETURN TO RACING

Last Sunday i made a long awaited return to racing at the sri chinmoy half marathon at dolls point .It was a pretty low key affair with only 138 starters with more in the 10 and 5km events .
I have had a lot of setbacks the last 6 months and the lead up to this wasn't without its problems ,a troublesome itb problem had forced me to back off intensity and mileage and i then managed to pick up a cold 6 days before the race but i felt well enough to compete .I got thru it OK but only after  dying a slow death the last 3km ,i probably ran the first 5km too fast for my conditioning after my brain forgot my age ! The cold affected me as i had several coughing fits in the 2nd half of the race ,my time was disappointing 1hr 39m 24s on a slightly long course 'garmin 300metres ' which is marathon pace,an average of 4m 40 per km. I wasn't feeling real flash afterwards and even less at the presentation where i discovered I'd missed 3rd in the over 50s by 1 place and 45 seconds ! the winner had come 2nd outright in a amazing 1hr 20min ,i was however 3rd womann !
The good news is i didn't bash my legs up being able to resume running the next day and now 2 days latter the cold is nearly gone . They have another half on in 3 weeks all cross country in centennial park
which i will have another go .I was planning to do the m7 black town marathon at the end of July but due to the itb problem i will defer probably to the Sydney marathon .
Looking back in my diary i was amazed that the only two races I'd done in the last 12 months were last July's m7 black town marathon and the 50miler ultra in Canada ,most of the small local races i used to run  have dried up .
Theres a lot of work to be done i just don't need anymore disruptions !