Paying The Price

One race that I like to run is the Ashenfelter 8K on Thanksgiving Day. I hadn't been training, because I was trying to get my feet in shape. The result was that I ran this race untrained. I posted a time around a 40:15, but the more significant thing was that my legs were sore afterwards, and not by just a little bit. I went to the race in part out of respect for the only American man to have held the world record in the steeplechase.

Yesterday, I went with my son to the Footlocker Northeast race. This race was something of a "How good are they really?" race. State champs come and go, but if you win a Footlocker race, you're the real deal. Yesterday, the NJ boys champ managed a victory. The girls champ had looked good going into the back wooods. When I saw her again, she looked like she was struggling just to hold it together. This morning when I read press reports, I saw that she'd collapsed, gotten up and still finished tenth. Whatever happened, I'd thought she'd have won the race more reliably than the boys champ. I saw her after the race and she looked fine, though perhaps shaken by the experience. Regardless, she survived, and did so well enough to make the national race in two weeks.

I had to run from near the start to the bridge at the 1.5 mile mark, then back towards the finish several times yesterday. I'm pretty sure that the running, easy, though with a pack on my back, done with my son, who seemed to like the experience, helped my legs to recover.