First Race

Wow, I definitely didn't see that one coming. The first race of the 2008 track season was a shock, and for several reasons. First, it was a shock to my system physically. There has been a part of my training that has been missing for a while now. I had not done anything faster than my typical training runs in almost a month. I was doing a few pickups after my runs before I had my injury, but I was overly cautious in trying to recover. I avoided anything that might cause a negative reaction or that would cause me to regress.

The second "shock" came during the race. I had pretty high (whether or not they were warranted is another issue) expectations going in to the race. It was the first time I've ever started a season with a 5000. The last race I had run was one of best of my life (CC nationals), so that figured in to my thought process, too. I planned to go out at 4:40 pace (14:35 5k) and then maybe pick it up towards the end. The race went out almost right on pace, but it was surprisingly difficult. When I was already struggling at the mile mark, I was pretty downtrodden. Looking back, it reminded me of the 3000 I ran last year at St. Olaf, where I went out hard and finished sluggishly. All in all, I ran far worse than I expected.

One thing that I found interesting following this race was how other people reacted and interacted with me. Obviously, they thought I would run faster than I did, too. People talked to me timidly, even asking me if I would still run the next weekend. Expectations can be a tricky thing.

I was able to take two huge positives from my race. First, I was finally racing again. It had been over three full months and it felt good to be running hard again. Second, I didn't feel my quad injury at all at any point. If it would have been a factor, it would have been easy to play it off like it wasn't a big deal. To have no lingering effects is a huge deal for me and it gives me a lot of confidence going in to the next few meets.