Notes
Winter Flight 8K (2012 Championship race for 8k)
Goal: run this as a hard tempo (goal was 35 min or faster, run it even splits)
Actual: huge negative split. 36th Overall. 1st in Age Group.
Started out (knowing that my right leg pain reoccurred during warmup and not knowing exactly what it was) and felt like a slug. Had no speed and felt like I was running on tired legs. This is a very rolling course w/challenging uphill rollers the first 3.25 miles and another at 4.5 miles. Focused on being in control when running uphill and probably overdid this. After the first 1/2 mile, nobody passed me. When I hit the first mile at 7:13, realized that what my legs/body was telling me was correct -- had no speed and felt flat. Got behind another guy who was running same negative split pace as me and we started to reel in everyone up front. As I heard the splits it was getting depressing (I run faster on my Tue nite 5.1 mile tempo). When we hit the 3rd mile, the guy and I both picked up the pace. There was a long downhill section but the camber was steep on the road and I could immediately feel pain and instability in my right leg. Ran into the middle of road which lessened the pain. When we hit 4 miles, I could actually hear the guy's stride change (he started to come down on his heels with a heavy foot fall, just like Lynwood does sometimes does on long runs when he says he is tired) so I put it into another gear and dropped him. Then caught up to a couple at the top of the steep 1/4 mile hill at 4.5 miles. Pushed it and ran w/the (younger) guy who kept saying (annoyingly), "this pace does not seem fast". We got to the track at the end side-by-side, I accelerated out of the final curve and took a lead but when I did so I almost collapsed because of the leg pain/instability (which allowed the annoying guy to nip me at the finish).
Post-race: about 5 min after race right leg was in pain and felt unstable (could hardly walk, hobbled). Actually did a warm-down. This is a torn quadriceps -- I have two areas of very sharp pain when I dig into the muscle, and the muscle is contracting and pulling on the knee.