Well, it seems that I have fully settled into the doldrums of both summer and the break from running that coincides with its beginning. This being recognized, along with the fact that there's a) not much to do in Tallahassee between the hours of 4am and 10pm and b) I'm not tired enough from athletic pursuits to sleep through any boring spots, leads me to the Grand Beginnings of the thought to hop onto the blogtrain.
While I disdain the thought of being at the far side of town to the one the bandwagon starts at I've managed to reconcile the fact that both Cir and Forrester have thoroughly kicked my ass in getting on the blog scene first (almost like throwing me in a race with them! Yay for depressing analogies revolving around my slow-ness!), I've managed to reconcile that by realizing that, once begun, my rambling writings will be far more glorious, entertaining, enrapturing--and, well, just fucking AWESOME--than anything either of their foreign asses could hope to turn out! (Yes, that was a call out despite how long it took to get there...)
So there's the Beginning, now for an Ending.
With the coming of the aforementioned break I've begun a break period--and a badly needed one at that! Since the 10 days or so before the ACC Indoor meet my lower left back started aching on a morning run, and by the end of the day my piriformis on that side had tightened up to the point where I was limping just walking around. This led to some issues with my Sciatic Nerve along with some compensation issues that resulted in my left quad and glutes being in a constant state of fatigue and, on occasion, going to the point of where they were totally exhausted and/or I couldn't feel my left leg from the knee down to my foot. The worst period of this was leading up to and during the Stanford 10k where I finished a grand total of 1 (ONE!) workout over 7 weeks; the best seemed to be (thankfully) the period just before the UNC Last Chance 5k (where it was 100% unnoticeable the day before, day of, and for 3 days after the race) and the East Regional 10k (where it was probably about 90% normal on starting a warm-up and mostly un-noticed during the race until trying to start some semblance of a kick with ~1200m to go).
Anyway, I suppose that's enough whining about a random injury that I can't even define or point to a cause about--I should probably enumerate the grand positives that came from the last training cycle. First of all I can say that I'm 100% sure I came out of the season far fitter and more confident in my abilities than I did coming into the year, or even after Cross-Country. Cross was great, don't get me wrong. I mean I dropped 89 seconds off of my 8k best, got eligible (that was HUUUGE), ran on the team that won ACC for the first time ever, made All-Region, and went to the NCAA meet and ended up standing on the podium with the second place trophy and seven of the best guys I could hope to call my friends. (Plus three people I've been lucky enough to call Coach) Needless to say, I went back home for Christmas with my head held up for the first time in two years!
Track, on the other hand, started out rather inauspiciously by comparison. a 14:56 indoor opening in late January at Arkansas didn't start the year out anywhere near right even though we, as a team, had made a decision to 'trash' indoors and just let whatever happened happen in an attempt to maximize our late-season efforts in during the Outdoor campaign. A couple weeks later, however, things went much better upon my return to Arkansas at the Tyson Invite--a 10second lifetime best over 5,000m and a victory (though it resulted in fair amount of ribbing from Braman over the rest of the spring about how I "gotta be the slowest guy ever to win that meet")! Things did, however, go downhill from there once my leg issues flared up the Tuesday after. In the end, however, the ensuing issues with completing workouts and keeping my miles at a respectable level and being able to successfully compete in races due to them are not of importance when looking at the season in a Big Picture sort of matter...
I finished the year as a 14:07, 29:35 athlete. That's ridiculous for a guy who couldn't crack 16 minutes of 5k or 9:40 over 3200m in HS. I can complain to myself all I want about not being able to do all the workouts, or run all the easy days, etc. that I wanted to--but goddamnit, I was DFL at Penn Relays last year in 15:30+ and my last three years have gone 15:46, 14:39, 14:07. That's pretty damn good and I've still got eligibility to burn.
In the end, what's happening now is that I'm done with what amounts to be an amazing year as my first wearing a college singlet. I'm stuck here in the calm before what (I hope) will be the most epic of storms in the coming year and enjoying some much looked forward to rest and the copious amount of excess time that goes along with it.
Onwards and Upwards!
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