What I've Learned Mondays

So I’ve decided that on Monday’s I will do a blog highlighting something I’ve learned either about myself or just in general from the week before. I know today is Tuesday, but I was working late last night, so the fatigue hurt my blogging abilities.

So what did I learn last week? Well, I learned that 2 years of retirement from competitive track will render your hamstrings obsolete. Let me explain.

Husband has a bunch of athletes competing at a meet in California in 2 weeks and he somehow managed to convince me to run on a 4 x 400m relay with some of these athletes. Since my retirement I have managed to stay fit and healthy. But I’ve mostly been doing the long stuff, miles of jogging or steadier type running and not meters at full speed. So in an effort to get relay ready we mapped out a couple of weeks of speed training to get my fast twitch fibers fired up again. And let me just say, the first session was not pretty.

I was actually very nervous before the workout. I knew I was in for a world of hurt. All those feelings of anticipation, excitement, pressure, tension, nervousness, expectation and pain from years and years of hard training and hard competition came flooding back once I put the spikes on and I was starting to rethink the whole relay idea.

But I got to the line and readied myself. The plan was to run 4 times 250m all out with 4 minutes rest. The first one went well and I didn’t breakdown too much. As a result my confidence was up and I was starting to settle into the session, so my second run was faster, but the lactic was starting to flow and my muscles were getting fatigued, fast. By the third one my technique was starting to break down and my face was beginning to register PAIN. Once I got to the finish line I was laid out, eating track. I could barely move for the amount of pain I was feeling all over but mostly in the hamstrings. It was awful. It felt like I’d just been shot in the base of each hamstring and as I tried to get to my feet, I almost collapsed. My legs were struggling to take my own body weight.

I had minutes to get my shit together and get on the start line for the final run. Once the 4 minutes was up, I rolled up to the start with no great conviction, but more hope, “dear god let me get through this, I swear I’ll be nice to everyone for a whole day if you just help me out for the next few seconds”

But it was ug……ly and more pain then I’ve experienced in the longest time. I wanted to die. Once I got to the finish, I just rolled around on the track. It was too hard and too painful to try and stand, yet it was too painful to not stand either. So some gentle rolling was all that seemed to help. I eventually got to my knees and then to my feet. I was getting shots of pain down my right arm. I communicated my concern that I was on the verge of a heart attack to Husband. “That’s nice, but your heart is on the left side”. Wow, right when I needed love and support all I got was his smart arse. Ok, maybe not a heart attack, but definitely a possible stroke. “You'll be fine”. God, he is just so dismissive.

I was also starting to walk around like a seriously overweight woman. My quads and hammers were so swollen, it felt like they were rubbing off each other, so I had that slow sway’ie walk going on. The whole experience was pretty shocking. My legs, particularly my hamstrings have not burned like that in forever. I wasn’t right for 2 days.

So that was the big lesson learned last week. Tempo and distance running do not maintain strong powerful hamstrings.