At 4:30 on Saturday morning, my alarm (obnoxiously) buzzed, and it was time for me to roll out of bed, brush my teeth, and roll on down to the gym to leave for the ETSU Niswonger Indoor meet. It was bitterly cold, and I was exceedingly happy that the race would be indoors. I was expecting pretty good things out of the race--I was loose, feeling good, and had thrown down some good workouts of late. The fact was, however, that my legs--while not heavy enough to notice upon getting out of bed--where heavy enough to begin to notice around 2,000m into the 5,000m race. Somewhere between 2k and 3k I began to fall apart, and it was all downhill from there, as far as the race went. I ended up running 17:58 and finishing third out of the three Montreat runners in the race. Hege went 17:25ish, and Jared was around 17:35. Both of them doubled back valiantly in the afternoon and ran legs of the DMR--Andrew the 1200, Jared the 1600. These poor guys were thrown to the wolves in that regard, as they're simply not the speed demons of lore discussed in John Parker's Once a Runner. Hege dropped a very respectable 4:35 (or so) 1600 in high school, but the guy hasn't done work as a miler since then, and has spent the last couple months in marathon training. Jared has never done mile-esque work and is also in that same marathon training. Needless to say, they didn't dominate, but as I said before: they put forth an excellent effort.
On Sunday, Ben Hall, Daniel Dunn and myself went on an afternoon jaunt up Greybeard Mountain (one of the mountains that forms the "bowl" that Montreat lies in), and then ran around the "rim" of the bowl and ran down from Lookout Point (the opposing peak) and back to the college. After that run my right Achilles began to tighten up, which was severely disappointing, and it continued to bother me throughout the night as several members of the team watched the Super Bowl in Montreat College President Struble's living room, as Pres. Struble had invited us to watch it with his family. (And what a game it was! It's a shame that the Cards couldn't pull it off, but you can't argue that it was a great game!)
Monday's planned long-run was split into two runs after Coach Larios saw how heavy our legs were in Saturday's races, so Luke Copeland and I hit the roads of Montreat at 6AM for 50 minutes, and then I doubled back with the rest of the team in the afternoon for another 65. My Achilles bothered me the entire time, but it was at least tolerable. I had an epiphany in English Lit this morning, also. I was recalling Achilles tightness from the past, and how it never bothered me for more than a few days, and I remembered my magic potion: Icy Hot. Thus, I got my hands on some of that stuff and applied it liberally to my leg. It's a good thing I thought of that solution, too, because this afternoon's workout was 10-25 x 400m. It was a classic Coach Larios workout--stick in the pack, or drop out and cheer. We were to do as many between 10 and 25 as Coach decided as he watched us, and we were to go at whatever rest he deemed a good rest based on the most recent one (maximum being 90s). In short, this style of workout is incredibly tough mentally, but it also makes one a much stronger runner. We ended up going 18 x 400 and averaging about 73s and pushed the 90s rest on most of the recoveries. It was both one of the best workouts I have ever run, and one of the most difficult. 18 x 400 in 73s with 90s recovery on a track shouldn't be overly difficult, however, it was snowing (hard!) and windy the whole workout, and that combination is one I have never faced before, and that made it more difficult than it would have been otherwise.
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