I'm content with the race, not particularly happy nor disappointed. I wanted to go out and churn out 68's and hoped to run around 14:10 or so. I went into the race blind in almost every way, other than the literal meaning, I still had my eyesight. The University of Washington often doesn't put seed times on their heat sheets because they want to avoid people whining about which heat they get accepted into and trying to switch. So I had no idea how fast the guys in my heat were. Turns out I had the fastest seed, which would have been nice to know just to have the mental victory over everyone leading into it. I also had no idea what type of shape I was in. Since I had a little hiccup in training leading into the race I had missed a few workouts. I had really only done one 1500m workout and about half of a 5000m workout before the race.
Holding onto 68's and running 14:10 didn't happen. Instead we went out and I got spit into the lead, but really didn't want to front run a 5k and kind of put the breaks on. Finally someone took the lead, but we still only went out in about 70 or 71. Soon we settled into 69's, which felt really comfortable. After about 1500m I guess they decided they didn't want to run 69's anymore and I decided I wasn't going to keep messing around and just stayed at 69. I was then on my own for roughly the next 3k hitting 69/70 easily and comfortably. With about 2 laps (approx. 600m at the Dempsey) the rest of the pack caught up. As soon as they did I just tagged on to them without much effort. With just over a lap to go (300m) a guy from BYU made a fairly solid move. I didn't think he had it in him to hold it and figured he'd come back... He didn't. I was able pass every one again, except the BYU kid and felt strong in my last lap. Just at the line someone out-leaned me and I ended up 3rd in 14:26.
I learned a few good things from the race and came to a few realisations. Firstly, I need to not worry about the seeds times and start going into races assuming I have the fastest seed. Secondly, never assume the guy is going to come back. Third, not that I ever really doubt my training, but I just have to trust my training and know that my coach wouldn't let me go into a race if I wasn't ready to run well. I also realised that in the early season I often times don't have the "fight" in the last bit of races that I need.
All in all it was a positive experience and I'm really glad I did it. Minus the fact I became ill afterwards. I took last week pretty well entirely off only running 3 or 4 times. I am now all better and getting back into the swing of things. I was having a few issues and say both our massage therapist Garfield Crooks on Friday and Wynn yesterday for treatment. Turns out I had a lot of weird things going on. Garfield told me he had never felt anyone have a gluteus medius as tight as mine was. He couldn't break the muscle apart with his hands or elbow, so instead he had me lay on the ground and was getting the heel of his foot into it. Then yesterday Wynn found a plethora of problems in my middle body ranging from my hips to my intestines, glutes, everything. After the race I could feel my right glute was really tight and my leg would go pins and needles randomly through the day and if I tried to run. After treatment with Wynn yesterday I feel way better. He figures that my intestines were all fouled up and they were pulling on my hip and taking me out of alignment. I've since started to putting the myofascial release ball in my stomach for 30+mins at a time and got onto some anti-inflammatories and a pro-biotic to try and sort things out.
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