Rewind to last Sunday... I went out for what was supposed to be an hour run with my neighbor. In a random coincidence, the guy who moved in next to me about 6 years ago also went to a division 3 college, ran track and cross country, did most of the same track events as me, and had similar PR's to mine. It works out great when the two of us decide not to be fat and lazy and go out for a run. Anywho... we head out and after about 10 minutes my left calf starts to feel kinda tight for no reason. A few mintes later I stopped to stretch it. A few minutes after that, it's getting so tight that I have to stop. I had to turn around and walk back to the car the way we came, sort of limping the whole way. The next couple days were miserable. My left calf was really tight and I could feel an area that felt like it was all twisted up. I took it easy all week and got well hydrated. Friday it felt good enough to try and play hockey. Skating isn't really calf intensive, but I was able to go full speed and forget all about it. I declared myself healed.
Yesterday, the running club put on a great little event called Busa's Bushwhack. It's a "tribute" event to a guy in our club who's famous, at least in the odd circle of trail running. He turned 80 on Saturday. He still does random insane crap like 50 mile trail races. He's a machine and super nice guy. I volunteered to help out and, since I had declared myself healed, I figured I could run the short version of the race. I spent 90 minutes on parking duty beforehand which was insanity because we had a record crowd that strained the school we were at. As I was flying around trying to find places to put cars, I could feel that the calf maybe wasn't better after all and I was questioning whether I should run. But I've been running for like 22 years or something... this is second nature to me... what could possibly go wrong? Now if you jumped ahead and looked at the results back when you clicked that linky thing, you may have noticed that I finished 4th. What? Go wrong you say? Well did you ever hear the term "Winning ugly"? Yah, it was kinda like that. Within the 1st quarter mile I was sure I should stop because my calf told me to. But who am I to listen to one lowly muscle even if it is a sort of important one? I kept going and there was something about the uneven nature of the trails that seemed to take the strain off a little. Once I got really warm, it sort of felt mostly good so of course that meant I could speed up. Because if the pain goes away once you warm up that means it's fine right? Well, skipping the blow-by-blow, I pulled of a big negative split (first mile was 7:30, pace for race was 7:02) and finished very respectably. And then I started to cool down. And then my calf got back at me for not listening. By last night, I was limping heavily. My left calf is so tight and inflamed that if you try to poke it with your finger, it feels like poking a very firm grapefruit. And from a distance, it looks like someone implanted said grapefruit into my leg giving the impression that I'm quite jacked which isn't a bad thing except for the excruciating pain that seems to be going along with it.
So I'm a moron. I feel like a weekend warrior which I hate because it implies that I suck and I just convince myself once a week that I don't before remembering the next day that I do. Not quite sure how long this gift is going to keep on giving, but there's a pretty good chance I won't be doing anything next weekend. Unless of course I convince myself that I can.
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