Another year, another Valentine's Day weekend spent at a track meet. This year at least the orange oval gave me a nice little gift in the form of a PR, but it wasn't all heart-shaped chocolates and roses.
Friday morning I headed down on the rolling, snow-covered back roads to Lynchburg, Virginia for the Darius Dixon Memorial Invitational. While the snow hasn't been sticking around much in Nova, it was a real downpour out West.
Four hours or so of windy roads we shook out via some loops around the parking lots surrounding our hotel trying our best to avoid black ice. There were a couple of close calls, but no wipeouts during my twenty-minute run plus strides. Race day morning I opted to shake out in the hallway of our Hilton Honors Hotel. I thought I was in the clear, having avoided falling on my run the day prior and playing it safe doing strides in the hall, but I was wrong.
As usual, I wanted some concoction of espresso and a milk alternative to sip on while I journaled before going to the meet. Luckily a teammate was popping over to a Panera to grab food and I decided to tag along to seek my coffee there instead of the hotel room variety which let's be honest is never that great unless you're sleep deprived.
As it turned out it had rained a lot overnight and that rain had turned to a lot of black ice. I was one foot on the curb away from getting into the car to go to panera when I slipped off and backward. With what I'll call cat like reflexes I managed to avoid total defeat, but my ankle took the hit. Ironically it didn't really hurt much or look that bad. It took me until standing in line for my medium almond milk latte to realize my ankle was bleeding out. Luckily it didn't swell much and a few tissues later was nothing more than a slightly bruised splotch.
Things may have started on thin ice, but all in all it was great to be back racing on Liberty's track. It's where I won my last conference indoor championship and team title for JU.
Unlike the last time I was at Liberty, the race plan was a bit different. The goal was to try to hit the former US indoor standard, which I missed in the end, but also to continue to train through the meet, to race into shape. It felt good to be able to lead the race for the most part and work with Julia through the five laps. It felt awful to realize that when I needed to kick it in the last 200 I had nothing left in the tank. While I crossed the line in 2:46.88 for a nearly four second PR it wasn't what I
wanted. We both snagged the meet record which was previously 2:49.11.
From the outside looking in I feel
like on paper I shouldn't be upset by the time. It was a PR and only the second time I've ever raced a 1k, but it's frustrating to feel like your body is quite literally holding you back. Mentally I want to race and compete at a high level, but physically I'm just not there yet and it's difficult to know that what's holding me back more than anything else is time. Time I lost due to injury and time I still need to be able to catch back up to where everyone else is training wise.
An hour and a half later and arguably the best part of the meet was leading off our 4x400. We ended up DNF'ed being without a fourth leg, but it was fun to have a baton in my hand again for a bit.
This coming weekend I'll be wrapping up my indoor season at the same place I ended it last year, JDL Fast Track's Camel City Elite. I'll be hoping back down in distance for my first 800 of 2021
Here you can check out the official meet results
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