The MS Runner

I had a feeling this might happen.  I woke up Saturday and drove to the Greenland Trail race that I was going to be doing, and my leg felt pretty good.  There was still some soreness, but not too bad.  Before the run, I was able to do some easy quad stretches, and I didn’t feel any pain at all.  As I stated in earlier post, I have been having a sore quad muscle.  Anyways, I started out running slow, mainly because of the trail conditions, and the number of slow runners in front of me.  After mile 1, the elevation started going up and within a span of 4 miles, went from an elevation of 6,875 to 7,425.  I believe that was my downfall.  I still ran (of course.  I am a male!) and once I started going back downhill, I thought I’d be fine.  The course is 8 miles, and I was going to do 16, which meant doing 2 loops.  I hope I didn’t lose anybody there with my overly educated math skills.  I finished the first loop and started back on the 2nd 8 miles.  Well after a little bit of elevation gain again, I was toast.  My leg really started hurting, and I tried to over compensate for it and ended up starting to put a strain on my knee.  At this point I stopped, put my tail between my legs, and turned around.  I was officially a DNF (did not finish).

It’s not so much that I didn’t finish, it’s that I think that I really did some damage to my leg.  Today it hurts like hell and I had a hard time going up and down stairs.  I’m really worried that this is going to set me back on my training and maybe even make me postpone doing The Colfax this year.  That would really suck.