The day was gorgeous. Winds were a cross-wind, so in a city where there usually is a predominant wind off the lake, which would be perfect for this race as a tailwind, they were not in our faces. It was sunny and cool and the competitions was stiff. The hamstring tightness I was experiencing earlier in the week from Monday's last workout was just about nonexistent. I figured with a nice long warmup and some decent stretches I would be ready to go. As I continued my warm up and some striders the tightness was all so slightly present. Would it let me go rip out a mile and just be a little sore or would it tighten and go into a full-on spasm right int the middle of Superior street. Well, I was handed the later and I had to make the only safe decision really. The first quarter was covered in a quick 62 seconds and although it was a little too fast I realized I had a nice downhill quarter ahead of me and I could relax, slow and gain some breathe and still run a 65 to be ahead of my pace before focusing on the last 800 meters. I didn't make it the next quarter and jumped the curb at 700 meters. My race was done. I could have slowed and hobbled in for the pathetic, "old-man" shuffle applause but really there was no point to that. I had only one decision and that was to stop and walk back to the start. DNF!
These last 5 or 6 weeks have been wonderful and I know I will use the speed I build up to my benefit later this fall. Anytime you can spend that many weeks on the track a person is going to be quicker because of it. The plan now is to recover, and switch gears and start running some medium-distance runs along with a decent dash of LT workouts and see where and what half-marathon I can get into. If I can nail one more race this fall that would be great. It's been a weird year for me and one that has had little racing. I guess that is a nice change, after all, the training that goes into all these races is often the best part!
Sept. 6-9th
Thurs: 50:00 6-8 striders at full effort
ham tight but no spasm.
Friday: 0 miles
Saturday: 0 miles *up all night crewing for 100 mile race
Sunday: warm up 35:00
race 700 meters DNF
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