I Feel Bad...

To take a quote from Han Solo after being interrogated, I feel bad. I did the Big Bear Lake Ultra yesterday. I was going at a manageable clip yesterday. I even had outdistanced the guys I was going to be needing to beat in next weeks Mountain State Classic. In the end though, I was freakin beat. That was just off 6 hours of hell and I'd only done 42 miles of the event. I had smacked my knee early on and had to back off, which let Eric Delaney and Kean Bird catch me at the first feed zone. I later left them only to see Kean about 2 hours later when the knee had begun to falter and I was dehydrating. I guess I was expecting them to do something like having the feed zones somewhat evenly spaced but the 16 mile gap between stops 2 and 3 was just a bit too far and I'd run out of water about 4 miles out. At that point, I had to let Kean go and the knee was really starting to talk to me. I was doing the rocky descents and the roads fairly well, but when I had to do serious climbing I was really feeling it. When I got to the 4th feed zone, I assessed the situation. 10 more miles of beating the knee up which was showing some blood down the leg from the earlier hit or just take the final jump in. I put the pride in the shirt pocket and gave myself a shortened day. It would've been good to finish and I would've done it in around 7 hours but my goal is mainly next week. I've got a series to defend and this day had already given me what I was hoping to get and then some. The plus side of things was that I was able to keep a good hard effort up for 4+ hours. Another good sign was that the legs and lower back are feeling ok today. The bad side was my shoulders and arms feel like someone repeatedly punched them. They hurt so bad that the following day, I could not even reach behind the seat and pull my notebook out when I stopped at a coffee shop. To top things off, I get the email notice today at my kid's football game that Cross Natz registration is at 12:01AM. Jeezus, I miss the old days of the scrum of the pack when lining up. I always called it the race before the race. In years past, I'd had decent luck with this, but in the past 3 nationals I started so far back that by the time I would hit the first patch of grass, the leaders were at least a minute up. Hopefully things will go a tad better this year. In the meantime, I'm going to soak in a hot tub for about 3 days.