The inglorious DNF

After an absolutely brutal 23K road long run a few weeks ago, I had already decided that this this would be my final ATB and "retire" from road races longer than a half.

It was my first time doing ATB with no one to meet up with beforehand.  I was expecting to meet up with some people, so when I didn't see them, my anxiety started to rise...the fact that everyone else seemed to have friends and the huge crowd definitely didn't help.

There was another incident that happened before the race that embarrassed me greatly and made the anxiety even worse; I won't go into detail but let's just say I was already in a poor mindset when the race started.  

My Achilles made itself known with a dull ache immediately. I was hitting the pace for the first couple 10 minute running sections, but it was a struggle, my legs felt tired, I got rid of the sign after 1K because my fingers hurt, and I was so anxious that I was blinking back tears.  After making the turn onto Burlington St and seeing that I was way slower than goal pace even though my effort was high, I decided to pack it in.

I took off the ears and thought about making it to the 10K relay checkpoint, but the medical staff on bikes passed by and they called the dead wagon for me.

Shared the dead wagon with an elite Kenyan (Gilbert Kiptoo, just looked him up on Sportstats) and a dude who was so fucked up from dehydration that he was completely delirious, even though it was less than 10K into the race.

Going to regroup tonight with a float and try again tomorrow on the trails.

Escape from anxiety.