To my few but faithful blog readers,
My deepest apologies for my long inactivity in posting and keeping you informed. So let me briefly update you all on what’s been going on in my running world. Well I left you all off with my decision to not run the marathon trials due to developing a sickness in Kenya and putting all that behind me to focus on the track trials.
The day of the marathon, January 14th, I sat back in my car refreshing runnerspace on my phone as I looked to see how my competitors and friends were running. Shortly after I began jogging around the grassy fields of Bullhead Park, I felt the first symptoms of what would lead to a few more months out of competition. As I’ve mentioned before in earlier posts it’s extremely difficult for myself to get decent medical care out in New Mexico as I’m only covered within New England. Unable to get an MRI I shrugged off the lingering pain for a few weeks not knowing I was running on a stress reaction. I made myself a metatarsal pad to lift the painful area of my foot off the ground and popped a few ibuprofen before every run. Looking back now at my recklessness I wish I could travel back in time and bitch slap my foolish self. After a couple of weeks of this there was no ibuprofen strong enough to mask my pain. I gave in and spent a fair chunk of change on a X-Ray and found out I had a full fracture of my third metatarsal. After almost three years of running a 100 miles plus I considered myself very luck to just now be dealing with my first fracture.
Fast forward two months later to myself ten pounds heavier and out of shape due to my laziness and severe lack of motivation for cross training, probably because aqua jogging in the UNM Johnson pool while seeing my training partners do easy runs on the Johnson fields makes me almost contemplate suicide. I’m dreaming of just qualifying for the trials so with just about three weeks backs running I enter myself into the Peyton Jordan 5k. I gave it a honest effort but the last 300 meters was a classic example of The Barnicle Death (http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/248561-2012-Stanford-Payton-Jordan-Cardinal-Invitational/video/632322-M-5k-H01-Lomong-lap-mishap-2012-Payton-Jordan-Invite).
Without many opportunities after to obtain a position in the trials I elected to focus more on the roads this summer and fall. My fitness finally came around in July and I was pretty excited to come home and race Falmouth. Unfortunately, this year’s Falmouth Road Race was the first year there was no American prize money. This was a big disappointment for myself as I got third and that performance at Falmouth in 2011 would have greatly enhanced my financial situation. This was also greatly disappointing because I think it’s crucial for there to be plentiful opportunities for American runners to make monetary gains to develop our athletes. While at this Olympics we did see examples of Americans being able to compete with the rest of the world such as Galen Rupp and Leo Manzano we must not forget the high and greater proportion of elite Americans who need support to just continue dreaming of reaching that next level. A few weeks later I went back to New England to compete in the 20k Champs and qualifier for the World Half Marathon Championships. I was pretty excited for the race because of my decent success at Falmouth but about 8 miles into the race I realized I had inadequate strength training for the longer races. Last year before I ran 62 minutes for my first half marathon I had done quite a few progressive long runs of up to 18 miles where I was finishing close to goal race pace. This year while I was very confident off some great track workouts I had really neglected the long run. Renato Canova would not approve.
Anyways, so now I must sit down and reflect once again. I ask myself is the juice worth the squeeze? I’ll let you all know when I finally taste it.
-Barni