Last Month

This post will cover the last month as I don't really feel like writing up the last few four weeks.

It's been a tough end of cross country season into November as the following events have happened surrounding my running:

1. I woke up sick the day of Conference

2. I ran poorly at Conference

3. I felt extremely sick the day after and took 5 days off (more as a planned break although this would have been a tough sickness to run through)

4. I really struggled to get back into a rhythm and feel good after returning to running 

5. I had sudden knee pain out of nowhere that I was unable to run through and ended up taking another 5 days off

I thought the advantage and bright side of the first two points was that I had time to take off, then build back into and be strong for the indoor December meets. Now, due to the last three, I'm mostly likely going to sit those out and be behind the other distance guys in fitness for a while. 

Starting from the beginning:

I was excited for conference and absolutely felt ready. I regarded CCSU as more of a workout kind of performance as I wasn't quite race-sharp. My September wasn't great but really just getting used to cross country racing again. New Englands was solid and showed some promise, but I knew I had a lot more in me. After getting sick and feeling incredibly flat, things came around this week. My legs/knee issue bothered me less. I felt smooth and ready to send it. I visualized myself getting out well, moving up throughout and hammering the last 1K. 

Fast forward to race day and woke up with a very, achy tight throat that was somewhat difficult to breathe out of. It was 3am or so, went back to bed for the final part of sleep. Woke up with a much more mild sore throat but some mucus and feeling a little sick. I was concerned and definitely upset, but didn't know for sure if it would affect me and all I could do was go out and there and race. It wasn't until the warm-up where I began to have concern. I felt truly terrible. Absolutely nothing in the tank. I'm used to some sluggishness and weakness but this was just at at concerning level. I wasn't really expecting to run well at this point.

The race went about as I expected- I got out very poorly. A big part of this was due to starting in the back row and just getting swallowed up very quickly. It wouldn't have mattered if I had the ability to run 3:30 pace for the first quarter mile that day, there was simply no room to move up. UNH definitely isn't a great place for the start of a conference championship with a narrow bottleneck for a big number of participants. I saw Kenney, Jeff and Brayden ahead. Eventually there became room to move and potentially go with them, but this would use a big surge and it seemed better to move up when there was more room. I ended up getting just behind Kevin and ran with him through the mile or so. Tactically, I thought I'd pass him and start moving up once it opened up, but instead I sank back and had difficulty keeping pace with those around. The rest of the race was just sad as I struggled to breathe, and had very little in the tank. I still beat some people and died less than other people around me, but it wasn't much of an effort as I got 9th of 10 on our team when I think I could have been 4th on a good day (realistic) and 2nd or 3rd on an awesome one (not realistic). 

The combination of me finishing 9th and getting immediately very sick afterwards pushed me off the regionals roster. I would have liked to run regionals in shape, but that wouldn't have been a good meet for me so I'm okay with missing another go at Franklin Park. 

In the end, I never broke 26 in the 8K in college. I finish up as one of the slowest guys on the team (I think only 3 have a slower PR) and not having scored at a conference championship. It's disappointing for sure. I definitely underestimated the effect of doing more maintenance mileage style training (respectable mileage/base building, but few serious/focused workouts) going into cross. After getting injured for 3 months, I think I needed more development in both intense racing situations and hard running on grass/dirt. I also think Cross Country is just as tough sport. For people who don't naturally excel at it, the more experience, the better. Continue putting yourself in races and slow improvement will happen. I saw it in the races where I wasn't sick. I just needed more time and having the cross country season sophomore year to develop tactics and strength absolutely would have helped coming in. Given my early season results, this was never going to be a season where I crushed it. I think I still could have had a solid season and realistically run around 25:50 on the fast course at conference. I'll never know though since I did get pretty sick. 

Ultimately, I'd give this season a 4/10. 2 poor performances, 1 mediocre one, 1 solid one and 1 weird rustbuster kind of race that meant nothing to me don't amount to much. Conference was really the target and this could have been a 7/10 season had I crushed the key race. I'm simultaneously disappointed not to reach or come even close to my goals while also accepting that this was just reality. I wasn't that fit. I'm not very good on grass. I got some unlucky setbacks. There wasn't much I'd do differently and felt the race outcomes weren't really determined by me failing out there but getting sick at the wrong time and my fitness on grass not being developed enough to run very fast. 

I'm not done with cross country. This was a sport I definitely enjoyed for much of high school. I felt I was good my sophomore year and ran consistently all season. I felt I got great junior year but really fell apart in the championships. Senior year started my decline at the sport as I ran mediocre for the regular season before running horribly at States and New Englands. I didn't get it back Freshman year, I was too injured to race Sophmore and Junior year and then I put together a mediocre and unsatisfying season this year. It wasn't the worst, but there wasn't anything impressive about it. Cross country has become a very weak point for me and I'm not really happy about it at all. On the track and roads, I can usually run about what shape I feel like I'm in, just been lacking some breakout performances in the last few years. In cross country when I run reasonably well and do things right, I get dropped hard, struggle and run unbelievably slow. I think I was fit enough to run around 26:00 on the roads early in the season, but can't even break 27 on cross country. It's gotten to the point where it's just ridiculous how bad I am at cross country and I can't really explain the results (or lack thereof) that I've had over the years. 

The positive side of my season is I had never once had to miss a competition or workout due to injury. This was my first season since Indoor 2018-2019 (2.5 years), and it was a full season. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great one but getting through a season in one piece definitely makes it easier to be healthy and successful in the next. I have to take this positive with a grain of salt because during most of the training, I had small pains that were never enough to take time off, but often were painful enough that they took all the fun out of running and I'd have no confidence I'd be able to get through weeks without injury. This is especially frustrating given how relatively easy and low mileage the training was. I wanted to do more and go harder at every stage but never once voiced that since I was really struggling to be healthy even at the current workload. 

The plan was to break 26 and be done with XC for life. It's become a sore point struggling so much in cross country and just breaking that small barrier would feel nice and I could be done with this sport that's been so tough for me. Instead, I didn't do it. I'm not okay with just quitting after running a 26:33. It's not a time I consider to be good, it's certainly not a time that was competitive anywhere on the collegiate level (even at new englands, the least competitive meet of the season I still finished around 80th) and it isn't something I can be proud of. I'm planning on putting together an XC season of open meets in Fall '22. I'd like to break 26 at franklin park and hopefully run faster on some quicker courses. 

That's a wrap on cross country for now. I'm finished collegiately. It's disappointing but there will be more to come. 

College XC results/comparison (4 of my 6 8Ks have been at Franklin Park)

I was a little sad for maybe a day or two about then shifted my mindset to indoor/outdoor. Yes, I really wanted to have a great XC season, but track is much more important to me and far easier to get confident about. First, I had to deal with getting quite sick. Lots of mucus, congestion and coughing and took quite a while for this to improve. It finally came around and breathing/heart rate was brutal at first. Running was really difficult as I just felt super flat and in terrible shape. I almost started to come around a little then woke up with knee pain out of nowhere. Given that 1) I took 5 days off, 2) I had averaged around 6 miles/day (not much), 3) I hadn't done anything hard or even moderate (fastest run in this week was 6:58, and 4) I took the time to stretch and roll out for 10 minutes before every run, this seemed like a random pain rather than an overuse injury. But the knee hurt on the run. Took the next day off, and the next run felt mostly fine. The pain came back quickly on the next few and it was time to shut it down for a little bit. 

I'm frustrated with this injury, given that I don't think I did anything risky or challenging at all. Overuse means did too much, but this was a very low-risk period where I was careful not to get too tight and I still got hurt. I don't really get this one and am frustrated with the lack of resilience in my body.

I ended up taking 5 days off under coaches orders, only light cross training (one day of biking, several long walking days). It seems to have worked as I had light discomfort on the first run back today but nothing concerning at all. I'd expect to have moderate discomfort almost to the point of pain at first but not enough to stop running, so this is certainly much better than that. The training room has been much more helpful/focused this time around so hopefully the additional treatment/exercises there has helped and can get back to full strength. I'll expect to run 20-30 miles this week if the knee feels pretty good and slowly work my way up. This week will be tough but crucial to get through. Every subsequent week will be easier and less worry about reinjury, so around this time next month I will back to respectable mileage and some workout if this goes well. Unfortunately, I'll likely miss the December meets but if I don't have more setbacks I can be still be very fit and ready for sub-15 in february. I'm somewhat bummed to likely miss the Maine meet but this is really because I want to run at as many venues at possible and not because it's a missed opportunity. Racing the December meets doesn't really impact success later in the season given the 5 week break from racing after them. 

That's where I am right now and hopefully can continue moving forward. I'll probably continue the weekly logs once I get back to 50 mile weeks. Hopefully racing in early to mid january. 

On one final note, I have once again destroyed my ankle in another sprain. It's pretty disappointing as after the initial frequent spraining of early summer, I had no significant/painful sprains after early July. This gave a lot of time for ankle to heal and feel a lot strong but it wasn't quite 100% and just landing in the wrong spot without being back to normal made for a big setback in the ankle healing. Fortunately, I don't need to run trails for indoor and outdoor track but would certainly like to get back to trail racing/mountain running/FKTs at some point.