Fell apart in Long Beach

I'm staring at the title that I just wrote and realizing that this post could be about any number of things.  It is not about my mental health--that seems to be under control now.

Today, I ran the Long Beach Half Marathon, or at least I made an attempt to run it.  At 4.6 miles, I cashed it in and stopped running and walked to my car.  I started this race pretty conservatively, executing the plan that my coach and I had discussed about how to run this race--it isn't, and never was a major goal race of mine, which puts it in a whole different category of what a success is defined as.  Stopping a third of the way into the race doesn't reach the level of any definition of success, except that I was successful in recognizing that suffering for the next 9 miles was probably going to cause an injury that would be the worst possible outcome of the day.  Well, except dying.  Dying pretty much trumps everything.

My knee started screaming at me, very suddenly, very shortly after I just exchanged some conversation with my friend, Chuck.  I was due to walk up the overpass we'd reached anyway....the plan was to hold something like 9 minute miles and walk up the hills to minimize the chances of post race day recovery that I have very hard times dealing with from a hard running race.  I thought this walk might let my knee loosen up a little bit.  It did not.  The subsequent slow jog downhill was excruciating.  I stopped and stretched, focusing on my IT band and it loosened up for a little bit.  I slowed down the pace to see how long I could make this last, and that turned out to be 3 minutes until it tightened up and screamed at me again.

There was no way I was going to make it through another 9 miles like this.  Luckily, the beginning of this course goes out to the west, and does several passes back near to where it begins--I was not that far from my car.  I walked off the course, got in my car, and drove home.

I had a week that did not treat me well--having gotten a vaccination on Friday that knocked me on my ass more than I expected it to.  "Muscle and joint pain" is listed as a common side effect of this particular one--it might be that.  It might not.  It might just be that it knocked me on my ass, and similar to anything that's like an illness, it might have left my body not functioning quite right for a while.  And running any sort of long distance is consistently the hardest thing I do to my body.  Some people are more biomechanically blessed for running than I am--a hard run of any distance beats the crap out of me.  That's probably why I generally enjoy it.

So, I'm going to get back up on the horse....not today, maybe

tomorrow, or maybe after I get through this colonoscopy this week.  Maybe I need to do more strength work--focusing on that a little more can't possibly be a bad thing as I age.