In the words of Ben Pearson, "Some days you have it, some days you don't." Today was much closer to the having it side than Monday and Tuesday, that was nice. We met at the Region course today. Warm up was hard. Bill took off after the first 45 seconds, and Ben Taylor and I didn't really notice until he and Chris were gone. Abigail and Sarah caught us, and I led for a while. Then I think Ben decided to try and catch up. I decided to try and race Ben. We gained on Bill and almost caught Chris on the last straightaway after leaving the hospital area. ...Ben is fast. I felt relatively good right after the warm up, but once everyone got in my shins hurt (the pain was not necessarily more intense than usual, but it was far more unpleasant.) We did 6 strides and I could barely keep up with everybody. We got back and my shins/calves were just shaking like mad. It was kinda scary. After strides we did fartlek 1,1;2,2;3,2;3,2;2,2;1,1 on the region course. It was really hilly. I decided to go for it and see how I did (wondering a little if I could even make it with my quivering calves.) The first minute on was terrible, but I pushed through, and after the off I was between Voun (spelling??) and Bill. When the next on started I decided that I'd just race Bill until either it was over (or if I died or something else unexpected.) Before today I didn't realize I had such a thing for racing people without telling them. The general trend was Bill would be ahead; then I would catch him going up a hill, and keep up until I heard "OFF!" Bill would quickly catch up, and I'd keep pace with him knowing that if I lost him on the slow the fast would suck that much more. As we got onto the second half, I started passing Bill and staying ahead on the fast part, and I 'beat' him. Even though I know it wasn't really a race. What may please me most, though, is that I really didn't notice my shins that much. I still feel like the faster I go the less it hurts (until I stop.) I'm not sure if that makes sense anatomically, but whatever. I did my cool down barefoot because Scott would have told me to, and I may run again tonight. If so, I did 6 this morning.
I ran another 2 miles. One on the track and one barefoot on the grass. I had some weird tension behind my right knee, but it was gone after a half mile and much stretching. Scott's right.
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