Races Like a Girl

Well, fuck. This was a bad race. A five miler I’d really been looking forward to, for a variety of reasons:

• It was my first club championships race, since I’ve only just joined a team a couple of months ago.
• The work I’ve been doing lately has set me up for some faster shorter races.
• We were gifted with ideal summer racing conditions: low-70s and relatively dry.
• I’d more or less tapered since Tuesday, so felt ready from that standpoint.

All I needed to do was better than 34:45 for a PR today at the 5M distance. I felt it was well within the realm of possibility. I ended up with 36:24. So what happened?

As often happens the day before a race, I had a new little niggle to deal with, in this case a weird issue with my right hip that came on quite suddenly in the evening. If I put weight on it while standing at a certain angle, such as when twisting to load the dishwasher, it hurt a lot. But I had been fine on a run in the morning. As long as I didn’t make dishwasher-loading movements, it was under control. I decided to ignore it.

This morning I got up and the issue was still there, although it had eased in intensity slightly. But when I set off to do my warmup and strides near the race start, I had a new issue: a sore right hamstring (which has been giving me trouble for the last 10 days, although it comes and goes). This was worrisome. I briefly thought of bailing on the race altogether, but hated the idea of doing that. So I set a goal of 7:00 pace (down from the original 6:50 goal) for the first mile and figured I’d see if I could loosen up the hamstring over the course of the race.

I hit the first split in 6:58, which was good, as it’s one of the harder miles, and I was more or less on plan. The hamstring hurt and, worse, had obviously limited mobility. I could extend my right leg about 80% compared to my left one. I kept at it, albeit with a slight limp.

Mile two was a 7:00 split. I was doing okay, but nothing was improving and I was having trouble maintaining my lopsided stride. So I shortened my left leg’s stride to reduce the stress on the right side. I had to slow down too, as it was really beginning to hurt, especially on the downhills and flats. The last three miles averaged around 7:28. It was the best I could do on an increasingly gimpy leg.

I thought of dropping out, but figured there was an outside chance that I could score points for the Harriers master’s team. Had I not had this issue, I’m sure I could have, as teammate Addy and I kept passing each other (she while walking up hills, me while slowing on the downhills so as not to further strain the problem hamstring). I also decided against dropping out as I was afraid that if I stopped running I wouldn’t be able to start up again. This turned out to be a good call, although I wouldn’t realize it until hours later.

Yes, the worst was yet to come. After I stopped running, new problems emerged. Now the pain’s geographical coverage migrated to include my right hip. Between the hamstring and hip, putting any weight on the leg was really becoming quite painful and I was limping all the way back to the car. Once seated, I felt fine. But we got stuck in bad traffic, and I could feel the hip tightening up over the course of the hour or so it took it get home. Once in the driveway, I discovered that I could no longer walk. At all.

Crutches got me into an ice bath. Percocet got me out of the ice bath. Now I’m lying on the bed, hoping this isn’t serious.

Goddamit. I shouldn’t have run that race.

Filed under: central park, injury, ny harriers, racing | Tagged: club championships, nyrr |