Turnover

Training went sort of downhill after the last blog as my left foot started to act up in a different way than before. On the Thursday before the opening meet of the New Year in Guelph, the 5th metatarsal side was hit with a sharp pain towards the end of my run in the evening. There had been some general soreness for a couple days so it likely shouldn't have come as a surprise, and I took Friday off. On Saturday, the day of the meet, I planned to race the 1500 and 3000, but after limping through a warm up before the 3K I knew I would most likely have to drop out if I chose to go through with the race, so I scratched my name from the start list. The 1500 had been earlier in the day and did not leave me too happy; I didn't get off the line quick enough in my heat and had to work myself up through the field. If it weren't for the help of teammate Matt Melnik bridging the gap to the leaders and pulling me along, I wouldn't have been in the mix at the finish, where I thanked Matt for his hard work by kicking past him in the final 300 to run 4:17. 

I took Sunday off and grew quite concerned as the pain increased in intensity, still all on the 5th metatarsal side. Naturally I started to read up on the possibilities of having actually done damage to the bone, and could not rule out a stress fracture, though I was still leaning towards the pain being muscular as with all my other foot issues. After cross training Monday I tested the foot with a typical workout day on Tuesday and was confident it could not be a stress fracture given how it responded, though I still ended up getting an x-ray later on in the week for safe measure. 

The rest of the week the pain improved and so Windsor was a go, where I raced the 3000 and 1500. The 3K was really frustrating from my standpoint…I wasn't super confident in my fitness and so didn't want to lead, but there was a lot of meaningless passing and cutting-off going on during the race (of which I cannot call myself blameless). I even utilized the much-vilified inside pass from my bag of tricks when rookie Dan Fournier and I were stuck behind someone falling off the lead pack. The only part of the race I was happy with was the finish: I closed the last 400m in 66, and the last 200 in 31, likely the fastest I've ever finished a race, which speaks more to having too much left than any improvements in speed. The video of my heat is below: 

The 1500 the next day went better for me, even in the times are comparable in scoring. I raced more aggressively and knocked 5 seconds off from what I ran at Guelph. 

I'll be skipping out on Western and running McGill in two weeks for the first time since my first year at Waterloo. Hopefully I can shake off some bad memories, as the last time I was there I ran 9:20 in the 3K after watching Megan Brown post a 9:11 in the same event…I thereafter referred to her as the castrator from the dominant way in which she crushed the women's field and me.