Saturday Pain Day

I didn't run yesterday. I was in a lot of pain when I woke up on Friday morning, so I went back to bed. I had plans after school, so I didn't run.

This morning I was tight, but things are feeling better each day. I went to meet Jimmy at 6am, with a thought of running for 2 hours, but realistically thinking it'd be more like 60-90 minutes. I was limping a lot at the start, and it felt very uncomfortable. It was right below 50 degrees too, so I didn't expect things to warm up to keep my leg warm. We headed down to the quarry and saw Andrew getting on the canal, so he joined us. He was skeptical about making it all the way to the quarry, but we got him on our team.

I didn't feel good. It never stopped hurting. And we were running pretty slow; between 7:36 and 8:11 for 7 miles to the quarry and back. Jimmy and I came back through campus to see the graduation set-up. Back on College Avenue, I said to him, "We're at 51 minutes. What do you want to do?" He said he was done, so I decided to keep going and try to finish when Pat started. After heading back to town and picking up the pace without any increase in pain, I thought I could run with Pat. I didn't know for how long though.

Pat and I ended up doing the normal morning loop, after I did some shell path while he got ready. David Lovegrove was supposed to show up at 7:30 too, but he didn't. Justin was there, but he had to wait around with his baby (wearing an adorable pink Neibauer Dental sweatshirt) until his wife or Daycare was available, not sure.

Pat and I kept the pace around 7-minute miles. I think that talking to him made me forget about the pain, or it went away. I'm not sure. But it was a solid run. I got in almost 17 and a half, and ran for over 2 hours. We ran back through graduation too, which wasn't the best idea as it was really crowded. UMW is lucky to have their graduation so early in the morning-- and today's weather was perfect. Some guys in a car in traffic told us to put our shirts on, so I responded to them as they were sitting at a red light. Pat was afraid to run with me at that point because there was a police car or something gay. He's a wimp. But at least he wears running shorts.

Afterwards, I went home to stretch. I didn't do anything special to my leg, because I had to get to Orange for a middle school track meet. It went fairly well-- better for the girls than the boys. None of my top boys PRed, although a few boys did PR in the 800. I think their PRs were pretty soft though, and only one boy ran faster than my top girl in the 800. She PRed in the high jump, 1600, 800, and 4x400. Good day for her. After she ran 5 seconds faster than her goal and a 7 second PR, I almost tackled her I was so excited. She did a great job all day long.

Hopefully tomorrow will be easier on my leg.