Blindsided: Stanford Invitational Race Recap

*I wrote this while flying back from California. It is what I call emotional vomit. I reread it, intending to make some changes but feel it is better to put my honest post-race hysteria out there. However, I have since calmed down and gained some perspective (see the Pain and Strain post). So here I offer documentation of my extreme disappointment, as I intend be as real and honest as possible in this blog. But please don’t take this as the enduring response to my race.  

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. What a shit show. I feel like I was just blindsided. My mind is asking if that actually happened, and my mind is answering yes, yes it did. (sigh) As much as I would like to simply forget about this god-awful race, I am going to follow through and recount the event. Maybe it will be therapeutic, who knows? I guess it is always best to start at the beginning, so here we go.

Out of all the emotions I felt leading into this race, I’d say the dominant one was excitement. Finally I had the chance to redeem myself on the track, start setting new PR’s, and with none of the pressure I felt during college. I knew it was still going to be tough but I put in a huge effort over the past week or so to work on my mental preparation. At minimum, I basically assumed that if I had a bad day, I would still run in the low 34’s because I just split a 34:30 for 10k in a recent road 15k. Well, I don’t want to ruin the whole story here, but I never realized I had another thing coming. We got to the track at about 7pm on Friday night. My race was scheduled to start at 9:06, so I had a little while to sit around before I went to warm up. Overall, like I said before, I was mostly excited. Definitely a little nervous. But really positive with myself. I listened to some music I had picked out to help me get focused. While I was running on my warm up, I was still telling myself really positive things. Not once did I think, “oh no, here we go again.” I was very confident that I was going to get out on that track and run a solid race.

The race got under way in the typical fashion. I started in the front waterfall, so I had to wait to cut in (not a big deal at all). Lee and I had discussed my race plan the night before and he told me to stay on the outside of the group for about the first 5 laps. I was happy to hear him say that because in college, my coach always wanted me to get in on the rail and it stressed me out when I couldn't. It was pretty crowded and there was some jostling. I didn't panic, I just tried to sit and run. And I tried not to think about much of anything. Well, it was going really well through about 3k. I was starting to feel the race at that point and clearly still had a ways to go. But I hung in there through about 5k, and then shit hit the fan.

All of a sudden, the race turned into every other college track race I had ever run. I honestly can’t remember exactly what was going through my head. One moment everything was sort of painful but fine. The next moment, everything had gone to hell. I do remember looking at the lap counter and seeing about 10 to go and just feeling like either dying or crying, probably both. Clearly, since things went south so fast, there was a definitive moment that completely demoralized me. I can’t say exactly when that moment was because I don’t feel like I consciously gave up. I know what giving up feels like and this wasn’t it. I was still racing, but very, very slowly. It is hard to explain, but I knew I wasn’t pushing myself as hard as I was capable, yet I couldn’t get my legs to move any faster. It was like trying to race through waist deep water. Apart from my stomach, my body didn’t feel too terrible. It didn’t feel like I was putting in a monumental effort (which based off how slow I was running, I clearly wasn’t). So to me, that means it was mostly mental. And that just makes everything so much worse.

I’m going to be honest and say that I hate running track. I feel like I try to put on a good face about it, but really, at my core, I hate it. I want so bad to have a good experience on the track, and I try so hard to have a good attitude about it. And then I experience something like what I just did, and it really makes me wonder if it is all worth it. I know people who are just downright negative about running on the track, and I swear that isn’t me. I know I keep bringing it up, but I did a lot of prep work for this race. Jake told me if I wanted to race well I needed to start thinking a little more positive about the race, and I 100 percent agreed. I told myself this track race was “out with the old and in with the new.” I told myself that I am ready to run fast, and gave myself proof as to why. I thought about what has been my downfall in the past (a hysterical panic moment) and thought of strategic ways to get me through. I did everything I could think of, and still, after all that, it was as if it didn’t matter. The EXACT same thing that ALWAYS happened to me on the track happened again. It exhausts me to think about it, because what else is there to do? What the hell am I missing? Why is track such an awful experience for me?

Sometimes I can work through these things by writing, but I cannot figure this out. Lee called it “track phobia” which I believe is an apt name. But identifying what I already knew was a problem doesn’t solve anything. I have no idea how to “get over the hump” so to speak. Zip. Zero. None. And I am so disappointed. I am so frustrated. I am literally fighting off tears. When I finished that race, I was almost in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe what had just happened and it really didn’t even sink in until later. That was THE MOST embarrassing, demoralizing thing I have experienced for a long time. I don’t even want to bother justifying any piece of it to myself because I feel like that just continues the cycle. That is what I have always done. Somehow we pull some scraps of goodness out of the terrible race, move on, train, and race again. Only to have the exact same result. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over, again and again and again. It never F$&%ing stops. I cannot endure that again. I’m sorry, it isn’t worth my time and energy. I don’t want to be miserable again. So this can go one of two ways, I can abandon it, give it up for a lost cause, or I can change. I wish I could abandon it, but I don’t want to leave track feeling like it always got the best of me. That isn’t satisfying at all. And I do not like to quit. That only leaves one option, continue plowing on and try to figure this whole thing out. But oh my god, I DON’T KNOW HOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And after what the race I just had, it is going to take something very special to turn things around.

Ugh. I’m not usually this negative. I’m sorry for my terrible attitude. It’s just that I spent five years feeling like I feeling like this, and I won’t do it again. I’m now here by my own free will, and I will never put myself through all that suffering again. Nothing running related is worth enduring that much endless misery. So somebody better tell me something quick because I feel this is an impossibly difficult task. I will not be able to simply sweep this race under the rug and move on to the next one. Because I know what will happen. I know. You might think differently, maybe you think higher of my moral than I do, but I KNOW what will happen. It is tried, and tested, and true. If we don’t make some adjustments things are going to get real ugly, real fast.

e.