Aches & Pains The Day After

September 8

It’s never a good feeling when a workout that was going well suddenly goes south. Today was a tough workout for a lot of my teammates, with people definitely still feeling some of the effects from their first race. No doubt, asking people to drop their split times from a steady distance run pace to faster than race pace is difficult, but there shouldn’t have been as many casualties as there were today. I was cranking along with the lead pack, and not having difficulty staying there even as my teammates began to fade. As Sam Murray, one of our highly touted freshmen, and I came onto the track for our first lap, I could tell he might have been feeling a little better than I was. Sure enough, he took off on the track, leaving me in his dust, as my hips locked up.

Frustrated about having to slow down and with no one else to pull me along, in a moment of combined physical and mental weakness, I pulled up and stopped running. Maybe I should have finished the workout, but maybe I saved myself from injury. It’s a long season, and it’s hard to say. I could make excuses for why I was lacking that last bit of pop, such as the morning run I went on unaccompanied this morning, but all in all, I’m trying to not to worry about a training run gone awry in early September, especially one that had so many positives. In fact, I think the greatest defeat of the day would be to allow that lap on the track to be my take-away from the day, rather than the miles that went so well beforehand.