I'm broken, but race anyway ...

In my effort to make my yard look more like a mountain lake paradise than a yard, I injured myself lugging around big rocks, loads of dirt and trying to roll boulders. It's also pretty apparent from those that know me that I'm EXTREMELY competitive. In a game of basketball after work (required fun/exercise), I made things worse by trying to annihilate the opposing team. This is why I have to avoid these group activities. Now I have a terribly painful groin muscle (aductor longus or something like that ... who cares what it is ... it hurts). My quad and hamstring are being pretty unruly and my knee, feet, back, arms and neck are angry and let me know it. This prompted me to visit the chiropractor where I was tempted to circle the entire body when asked where the problem area was. The plus side is that the yard is to a point that I won't have any heavy lifting to do until spring when we work on the side of the house and under the deck by the lake. Perhaps now I can get back to training hard instead of limping around my run courses in pain.

This is on the third lap as I surged on Evan. I'm trying to look relaxed, but that's hard to do when there's only a little blood in my lactic acid!

Speaking of pain, I think that's Evan Sims in a word. He showed up to Seven Mile, which was just a day after I moved a half dump truck of dirt via wheel barrow. Lucky for me, he was out for blood after finishing a combined total of 10 seconds back in three races over 29.33 miles. He took off so fast that I was completely unable to respond. Fortunately, there were hills, which I run well and he doesn't like. At the top of the hill on the third lap, I managed to eat up the 27 seconds he put on me in the first kilometer. I did my best to try to look relaxed as I surged past him, but was really suffering. I don't know how he did it, but he hung with me all the way to the finish. The gap this time was just 2 seconds. This guy is faster than I am, but unfortunately ends up going too hard in the first part of our races. It just goes to show that a good strategy can go a long way. I work a race from every angle, which is necessary to have any chance at beating someone faster than I am. I was still second on the day and continued my streak of umpteen consecutive losses at BRRC CC races (aka never won one). Chris Morlan was first in 17:14, I was 17:30 and Evan at 17:32.

This was Amanda's pic. I liked it better than the ones I took. I've been creating a daily picture journal of the progress of our yard (about 15 per day). In the process, I've missed out on taking pics for the natural beauty on several occasions. We just had our yard hydro seeded, the neighbors too, so it's almost green like a lawn. The trees are changing colors and the geese are back again. It's nice to have such a great view in the back yard, but have a quiet neighborhood and small city on the other side of the house.

The days following the race have been pretty tough, but I've continued to train and race. We had a race at Fairchild on Friday, which was the first annual Freaky Friday 5K fun run at 7PM. We ran around the survival training school area with glow sticks lining the path, which was really cool. I spent the entire run calling out "I can see you" or "I know you're there." Allegedly people were hiding along the course dressed in costumes to scare the runners, so I wanted to avoid a scare and injuring myself any more. As it turns out, there wasn't anyone hiding out there, so I was just talking my paranoia to the empty darkness. I was really working hard, but only managed an 18:12. Perhaps if my legs worked or I'd rest and recover. It's just a thought. The next morning was the Oktober Fest 5K (was it with a K?) at Mead. I was tempted to go race Josh Hadway, but the 2-hour round-trip drive proved to be more of a deterrent than having trouble walking. Sorry Josh. I would have been worthless competition anyway, but certainly would have tried.

I'm still running outdoors, but haven't ridden in a couple weeks. It's times like this that I need a coach! I still swim and run, but find myself fixating on the Birthday Challenge and losing sight of my overall plan for next year.