Notes
Went out feeling pretty good at 5:00 for the first mile. Didn't even feel that bad going through the 3200 at 10:04 which is my 3rd fastest 2 mile i believe. After that i was running with Ponton and we were battling away. I wasn't feeling good but i didn't really care i figured if i could keep competing with ponton then i would end up going pretty fast. Things started going downhill for me with about 1k to go. I was giving it everything i had but i couldn't hold on to Ponton anymore.
With about 3 laps to go i was going hard but my body was no longer cooperating. I was at this weird point of, okay i know that i can run 600 meters but idk if my body is going to let me finish the race. One of my mentors in running in high school once told me that to truly max yourself out in a distance race (like 5k or something that is a lot more endurance than speed) then you are going to get to a point in the race where you are not sure if you can physically finish. That was the last 600 for me. I saw bobby in front of me and i was "well shit looks like somebody needs to get lapped" at this point i could tell i was wobbling a bit and my form was going all to hell. i kinda want to know what i looked like for the last 200 and most particularly the last 50 meters, i can't imagine it was pretty. I think my last lap was something like 40 seconds which is pretty pathetic but at the same time i could not have gone faster. As is i almost fell a couple times down the last straight and then couldn't stand by myself after the race for quite a while.
At some point coach told us that the mechanics of running pretty much amount to a "controlled falling" i definitely believe that is correct and today i found out what happens when you start to take away the "controlled" aspect of it. In many ways today was really frustrating, my body would not cooperate with my mind. At the end of the race i was constantly telling myself "speed up" and my body was struggling to keep myself supported. If the race was about 10 meters longer then i would have had to fucking crawl across the line.
I'm definitely disappointed with my time but after losing that battle with the hurdle tuesday my right quad was not helping me much. i completely crushed the blood vessels in it and have a grape-fruit sized bruise on it to back me up. I also think that 5 flat is a little faster pace then i would run if i was trying to run a perfectly even pace, but at the same time i had to give it a try b/c who knows if i can actually hold it on a given day until i try.
One minor irritant after the race was when i was laying down back at team camp, shortly after having puked up about all the water in my stomach, one of the freshman 400 runners, joe conti was like "you gotta get up for the 4x4" with this tone that seemed to indicate that i was some lazy piece of shit. I've run the 400 all out before, worst case scenario fatigue wise you lock up and have a shit ton of lactic acid to deal with. You don't however run yourself to exhaustion in such a way as to prevent you from being able to stand up. I love our team, if i could have i would have been up cheering, as the case was i had to settle for leaning heavily on the trash can so that i could be up and able to see the track. And therefore i was in no mood for hearing this kid's shit. I just feel like there is a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of the rest of the team on how demanding racing is on distance runners when they go all out.
Oh also coach, and this is only slightly related, this same kid ate some of your food. It was that bag of, i think nuts, that you tried to re-open and cassie pointed out was already opened. Just throwing that out there cause i officially don't like this kid and have an excellent memory for things like that. Sorry this log ran so long