Saturday, June 4, 2011

The Nightmare Continues

In a scene that's become all too familiar this season I sit here post race offering another post mortem on yet another race that just didn't go to plan,to say it's soul destroying is selling the drama short but clearly tonite underlined a belief that"somethings not right" w/in my slender frame but we'll get to that.

I seeded myself at 4.30 which I felt was reasonable given a pair of indoor 4.33s in January and February and it earned me a spot in heat 5 of 6 against a field of 13 high school athletes.
Although my reaction to the gun was good I was relegated to the back of the field as we entered the first turn,not to worry I thought in order to clock a 67 opening lap I didn't need to go out all guns blazing.....
I was gobsmacked to hear 71 seconds for my opening lap,while I didn't feel I was straining to run that the fact was I only had one gear and this was it.
72 seconds for the second lap 2.13 at 800m.....great if this was a 3,000m or 5,000m not so great for a mile and clearly the hope that dropping down in distance would cure my ills of late had proven unfounded.

76 seconds for lap 3 as I cast a lonely figure adrift at the rear of the field,was the temptation to step off the track and bag it great?.....is the Pope a catholic? is the sky blue??is water wet???
All I could muster was a final lap was 75 seconds to record a woeful 4.54 mile,this was slower than the 4.49 mile I ran at Langley Virginia in my first race post achilles injury 2 years ago.
My team mate and friends who'd been present to bare witness to this horror show were quick to add words of comfort on a bitter blow to my hopes that this was the race that would turn things around for me.

So what now?as it stands the 5,000m at Worlds is 5 weeks off,the temptation is not to go but the thought of eating a almost $600 plane ticket doesn't sit well so I may as well go,suck it up and try to make the most of a bad situation.
As for Nationals in 8 weeks?I refuse to throw in the towel just yet but clearly off of a 4.54 mile my 1,500m time would only be 4.36 clearly not medal worthy.
The other issue of continuing to race let alone run will{I hope}become much clearer b4 the end of next week,one way or another I'm getting that blood work done so that we can get to the root of the problem and go from there.

2 comments:

Kevin C. Tofel said...

If there's a medical issue, I hope you find out what the root cause is. Gotta be frustrating to not know why your body isn't responding the way you hope.

As far as Nationals: yup, it's a bunch of money to drop if you don't think you'll place BUT: I'd rather participate and finish last then watch from afar and never know what kind of time I ran. Gotta live each day to the fullest - best of luck with whatever you decide.

kevin f forde said...

Thanks Kev,
first things first I need to get a medical answer to what is clearly ailing me once we know what it is we can try to correct it.
As for Nationals,I'm not big on going along to "make up the numbers" but w/ 8 weeks to go once I can correct my physical ailments then maybe I make make a run at Nationals