First off, the important stuff. I was only able to have this opportunity because of the kindness of so many people. Especially Susan Heiser, who organized and stressed and fretted and did an amazing job of getting everything ready. The volunteers and judges who came out super early on a Saturday morning. To my amazing hubby who supports me always and drove all the way down there, judged and drove us home (11 hours each way). To everyone who helped make it possible a huge thank you!
The race started off and I was on pace quite easily. Obviously 5:30 per K pace shouldn't be hard for the first 30K. But I never felt good. My hips felt off. At about 7K I started getting a pain in my SI joint on the left side, going down into my glute. I did my best to ignore it. At about 14K or so it started to really hurt, to the point it was causing me to tighten up. I asked Susan if she had a hard ball and she found a tennis ball. So I stopped for a minute and rolled on it to see if I could get it to release. This took me about 30 seconds. So I was now 30 seconds off pace. I started off and did my fastest K of the day; 5:24. The worst thing was rolling on the tennis ball didn't help. I was able to keep at or slightly under pace for a few K, but the pain was just getting worse. Because of the pain in my left hip and trying to protect it my right hamstring was getting super tight. Then the pace started to fall well over 5:30 per K pace. I was hitting 5:40s and at 20K I hit a 5:53, so I knew it was time to call it quits. As much as I wanted to hit my goal I have lots of important races coming up, and I did not want to injure myself. It was very hard to stop. It was so tough to not fight to the very bitter end, but I've tried that before and gotten injured. I know I made the right decision in my head, but my heart is still heavy. What made it lighter though was seeing how well Ian did. While he didn't make the time he did set 5 American age group records and stayed so tough! It was such a pleasure to watch him and cheer for him.
We decided to drive back after the race and just get home. I've been away for so long and the idea of being in my own bed with my hubby was sooooo nice. So we drove with two stops and got home at 3:30 AM. We slept ourselves out and got up at 11:30. Dave decided he wanted to go do a local road race as a workout. I didn't want to race and didn't want to be in the cold for that long (it was a 15K race) so I stayed home to recover and rest. I texted my chiropractor and asked when she had something available. Because I am surrounded by so many amazing people, she made an opening for me right then. So I drove out to Chemung and saw her. She was great, spending a ton of time with me. My hips were out, my neck was out (but my neck is almost always out after I travel that much, especially since I fell asleep in the car). I was wonked out in about three other places too. The biggest thing she found was that the pain I was feeling wasn't muscular, which was why rolling on the tennis ball didn't help. It was the nerves going through the bone area that were inflamed and connecting into the sciatic nerve. With the adjustment and sitting on ice and taking some anti inflammatory it's feeling much better. I took the rest of the day Sunday off by her advice.
Now the focus switches entirely to 20K. World Team Championship Trials are April 3rd in St. Louis. Since I know I'm strong I'm focusing entirely on speed for the next two weeks. Short, all-out speed and longer sustained speed. I need to move past the disappointment of last week and focus forward. As they say, life goes on.
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| Here's the little guy who was at death's door. Looking great this morning! |
And speaking of life goes on, nothing shows that more than spring time and getting new chicks!!!! We have 30 new meat birds and 6 new layer chicks. We didn't realize though that the meat birds would bully the layers, so we had to separate them. We didn't know we'd have to do that so we weren't prepared for it. Thus we now have 6 layers in our kitchen cheeping and being cute. It's still quite cold outside, in fact yesterday it snowed, and stuck on the ground. We have a heat lamp for them, but apparently it wasn't enough. So they were huddling in some groups and we noticed that one chick was being smooshed to death. I saw him and he was cold and barely breathing. So we brought him in, warmed up the heating pad and stuck him in the kitchen. By night he was up and aware and doing great!! We kept all of them in the house in the warmest room of the house and this morning I was greeted with some very loud chirps! He was up and running around and greeting the world! I'm happy to say I just took him out with his brothers and sisters in the barn. And with the second heat lamp outside everyone did great last night. Whew!
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| Our baby layers |
Time to focus, time to move past disappointment and time to work towards new goals.
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