Playmakers' Grand Finale

'Twas the Sat' before Thanksgiving, and all through the trails, runners were racing, being tough as nails...

Hola! And welcome back to yet another edition of Blaze! Finally, after about six weeks or so of not racing, I have returned to action. Today was the Playmakers' Grand Finale race, a cross-country race put on by our club team as a last harrah before club nats in December. We also use this race as a final measuring stick for picking who will be on the team that runs at club nats, so it acts as a sort of selection race as well. Not to give away the ending, but I was not in the mix for the "varsity" club nats team. However, considering how my training this fall has went, I don't think that it was necessarily a bad race either. I ran a 26:40 or so. Not bad, considering that I ran slower at the Autumn Classic, my last outing. But not really an improvement either. At least I'm not regressing.
For the most part, the rest of the team ran great. Our top guys ran PRs (Jake finally breaking the 25 min barrier), or at least ran close to them. So overall, it was a good showing.
This will probably mark the end of my cross-country season for the year, as I don't see myself paying my own was to Seattle to run club Nats. So what's next for me? Well, I'm tempted to run a Turkey Trot back in Nebraska on Thanksgiving, but I haven't made a decision yet. Then, I'll probably start prepping for an indoor season once again, and possibly run a 3k or mile indoors in December before Christmas break. Really, this last race has shown me a few weaknesses that I need to start working on. I really don't feel strong right now, and especially not on hills, so I think that may be a focus area for a while.
One last thing before I sign off: I am growing more and more convinced that my cat is 100 % pure awesomeness in feline form. That is all. Blaze on!

A horrible, awful, no good, bad day

Some days, its just better not to get out of bed. Saturday was one of those days. Unfortunately, this is not what I did. I started off the day feeling pretty stiff, probably from the workout the night before (hills at Mt. Hope Cemetery). Instead of taking it slow and letting my body loosen up, I went for a run almost immediately. So that was probably my first mistake. To be fair, I was going into work, and because of the MSU vs. Minnesota game, I would have to pay for parking if I drove, so I was multitasking: commuting to work while getting my run in. Well about half-way into work, I decided, "You know, the left side of my body hasn't been injured in a while. I think maybe I'll roll my ankle and that should help balance out my injury woes." So yes, I rolled my ankle. And it hurt. A lot. And here's where I made my second bad decision. I sat down for a while, trying to decide what to do: go in and get some work done, or do the smart thing, and go home, put some ice on my ankle, and just go into work later. Of course, I chose the not-so-smart option. Which meant that I had to run another 37 minutes total on my ankle instead of 12. And it was indeed on my trip back from work that I realized what a stupid decision it was.

All-in-all, my ankle decided to swell so that it was a good 25-50 % larger than it normally is. Oh, and the colors! My ankle is not a beautiful shade of what can only be described as "black-purblue."

I wish that I could say that that was my bad day. I rolled my ankle, and it turned blue, swelling to the size of a grapefruit. But, unfortunately for me, I did not just call it a day and go back to bed. No, I decided that I needed to go back into work to finish some things. And the Western blot that I was developing (the reason I even needed to run in to work at all) decided that it didn't actually need to have any protein on the membrane. So that was a waste.

And the day continued. When I got home, I was shocked to see that the Concordia men had taken third at the GPAC meet... behind Dordt! What does this mean? Well, it meant that the men would probably be staying home from the national meet, a first in years (sure enough, they didn't qualify). Since Colin probably will be reading this: my heart goes out to you guys. Go get um on the track! I should also mention that the woman had a good meet, taking second behind Nebraska Wesleyan, and just edging out Morningside. So congrats to the women, who will be headed to Portland in a couple weeks.

Needless to say, at this point, I really didn't even care about the Nebraska game.

Really, Saturday wasn't all bad. There was a new addition to my life. A short-haired black beauty (cat) named Lylah has decided to take up residence in my apartment (okay, I did most of the deciding), so that's actually been pretty good. I also pulled together an EB abstract (which was due today... nothing like waiting for the last minute, right?). And I'm actually able to run on my ankle, although there won't be any runs that require me to use uneven footing or sharp left turns in a while. I guess if this is as horrible as my days get, I'll definitely take them (every now and then). Blaze on!