Damaged goods

To close out the McDowell Mountain race last Saturday, here is how I fared:

Overall: 46 out of 51 runners
Age group: 19 out of 20 runners

I've never pretended I'm super-fast, just durable (though secretly, I'd love to keep improving my 50k times).

This is the first race in a long time that I have almost been incapacitated afterwards. I didn't even feel this bad after the 50 mile Black Hills race. Or IMAZ. While Sunday evening you might not think I'd done anything special, come Sunday however, I was in bad shape. I would have paid a ba-zillion dollars for someone to install one of those motorized chairs going up the stairs. Seriously. That's zillion, with a 'ba' in front...

I was walking on my heels all day Sunday and into Monday - legs locked afraid to put pressure on my quads and therefore reeking havoc on my lower back. Side-stepping down the stairs (unsuccessfully I might add because of the damn garland wrapped around the railing) was only part of the hilarity that ensued in our house that day. Even the kids could have crippled me with a well-placed jab to the thigh. It didn't help that we had to stand in line for about 2 hours to get Santa pictures with the kids either...

Thankfully I had a massage scheduled on Monday morning. I reconsidered after I realized that the massage might actually hurt more than finishing the race on Saturday. And it did. Quinn (AFC Chiropractic) is great and is just doing her job but secretly, I'm sure she loves to make grown men squirm and whimper by just pressing your IT band with her thumb.

Turns out, a massage is just what the body needed.

I am on the mend today and managed to get out for a short recovery run in between the rain storms. There are only a few short weeks of training between my next races (Yes, multiple. Yes, less than 5 days apart) in January. More about that later.