Notes
All American. This was a pretty terrible race. It felt almost identical to the Cedar Rapids 8k earlier this year. I got out feeling alright and then my back just got extremely tight. I basically fought that for 2 miles while slowing down more and more and letting everyone pass me. The last mile I was able to push through it a little more and catch back up to a group of people but it still hurt quite a bit.
My slowest time as an alumni was 21:12 prior to this year so this is obviously disappointing. I'm sure it is somewhat fitness based but I also have been training pretty well lately so I don't know why I'm racing so poorly. Then again, I also just ran a really solid 5k so it doesn't seem to be all races that are feeling bad either. The most frustrating part is that I wasn't really even able to race half of the 4 miles. For the most part it was just trying to relax and work through the pain. And every time I would make any little surge it would get worse. Nothing really seems to be bothering me enough to cause this so I don't know what I can really do about it, but hopefully trying to get back into an even better training regime will help.