bad races

Molly Huddle at Running Times:

"I used to fear the unpredictable off day, but now I realize that grinding is part of racing. On 'feel great' days, it is easy to run fast, but on the other days, you find out what you are really made of."

Yes, grinding is a part of racing and I have never DNF'd because I take what she says as axiomatic. But is this wise advice? I never know. I had a terrible race at Richmond a few weeks ago. From mile 8 on, things just weren't going well. My legs felt heavy and wouldn't turn over. I ate too much too soon before the race. I ate too much the night before. I felt the fluids in my stomach the whole way. I got a massive stitch in my side at mile 19, when I took goo, basically because I hadn't digested all I ate. I think miles 19-21 were about 7-minute pace.

I knew my family would be at mile 10 -- I could tell them there, I thought, that I would run to the half and then bail. I made it to the half and there thought I would quit at mile 17, where my family would be next. I made it to 17, then through the difficult goo cramp, picked it up at 22 and finished the last four miles around 6-minute pace.

I respect myself for not quitting, even though I was very disappointed with my time. The benefit of quitting would be a faster recovery time, not having to take virtually a month of reduced training to recover. I thought because I wasn't running this marathon terribly fast I'd recover more quickly. I think that's been the case--or maybe not. I was able to run a decent 10 mile race last Saturday but have had a nagging left hamstring tweak since.

I ran 7 this morning -- it felt good, no problems on the run but it's been stiff all day. I've been sitting on a baseball to work out what I think is simply a tightly knotted muscle--I feel it up in my piriformis and down through my calf. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I can't wait to race again, but it won't be for a while. I admire what Molly Huddle says because there's a lot of truth in it for everything we do in life: basically, if you work consistently and don't quit, you'll accomplish something, even if not every day's the most successful or productive. I try to put a little something on paper each day, no matter what. But you can't mix running advice with life advice as easily as those who want to talk about the latter in terms of the former; running's more of a metonym for life, not a metaphor. A lot of advice you get about life--"don't quit," for example--is bad advice for running.