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Rojo Speaks: October 29, 2001
No Marine Corps Marathon: A Hard Yet Easy Decision
Considering that a bunch of people have
been following my training log the last few months on-line
and that I've been gearing to run the 2001 Marine Corps
Marathon for much of that time but decided not to run at
the last minute (and mention this on the training log anywhere),
I wanted to give people the rationale behind my decision.
I didn't run the reason for one simple
reason - I was injured.
After
helping pace Catherine Nderebal to her world record in Chicago,
I took it easy for 5 days until the next Saturday (October
13th) when I tried to do a workout. I don't know if it was
the fact that I was still tired from Chicago, the fact that
I had new shoes on, or a combination of the two, but a bad
case of achilles tendinitis immediatley popped up. I couldn't
walk without a limp for several days and basically took
the entire next week off (running only a total of 50 minutes
- I did a lot of pool running) and tried to do a workout
last Sunday (October 21) as I figured if I couldn't complete
a simple 6 mile steady run at marathon pace without too
much pain, then it would be foolish to try to race 26.2
miles a week later.
The workout went horrible. I couldn't
even run one mile at marathon pace as my stride was all out
of wack and I was in pain. The next day my achilles was
very sore and it was almost as bad as when I first hurt
it the week before. I was also surprised that my hamstring
hurt as well (probably because I hadn't been stretching
it as religiously as I normally do since I wasn't running
on it all week). When I got out of bed on Monday morning
and realized my achilles was sore as heck, I knew that I
wouldn't be running (although I still did go to a slew of
physical therapy appointments).
It’s definitely disappointing that I didn't
get to run - a "tough pill to swallow" as they
say. Imean
I decided not to go back to teaching (which I loved doing) and to put my
professional development on the back-burner, to focus on my running
and yet I didn't get to run the one race that my training
was geared to this season.
It’s been a goal of mine to win the Marine Corps (which
people outside of DC don't seem to understand - it's because
it's the biggest local race by far) and really
thought this was going to be my year as my buildup went great and I’m in by far
the best shape of my life. Everything
went pretty much as planned except I didn’t get to do the race.
However, in all honesty, I'm not that disappointed.
I KNOW
I made the right decision. In actuality, I didn't make a
decision at all (which all of my friends know as I've got
a reputation for being a bit indecisive) - the decision
was really made for me - by my body.
I have much bigger dreams in running than
winnign the Marine Corps and I can't afford
to do something stupid that will prevent me from pursuing them. It would have
been foolish
for me to try to be a hero and win the thing when I can’t even walk without
pain.
Don't worry, I’ll be back. In fact,
not running the race will allow me to get back into
things earlier than I had planned. I'm hoping to get back
into running after getting back from watching my brother
Weldon
kick butt in New York next weekend.
I’m trying to keep a positive outlook on this. Taken all together, I’ve had a good fall
season. It has been
said that if you keep taking take two steps forward and one step back,
you’ll
eventually get to your destination if you're persistent enough.
I
know I'm persistent as injuries has accompanied me throughout
my entire running life. I definitely took two steps
forward this fall (getting back into it, setting p.r.'s
at 5 miles, 10k and the half-marathon), and this is just
a small step back.
I keep reminding myself
that the destination that I'm training for is several years
away - the 2004 US Men's Olympic Marathon Trials. That's
really the one race I'm training for. The 2004 US
Olympic Marathon Team is really the only Olympic team that
I give myself the remotest of chances of making.
Now don't laugh at that
last statement. But I'm sure that what I'm sure that many
so-called American "elites" are doing - laughing
at my last statement about hoping to make the Olympic team.
Their thinking to themselves,
"Why the heck is some 2:23 guy even thinking he's got
a 1% chance?" Well don't laugh. My brother
thought the same thing when he was a 2:25 guy (and Marine
Corps champion) in 1998 and he put himself in great position
to make the 2000 Olympic team. He didn't listen to
all the nay-sayers (basically everyone in the world except
for himself, his coach and me (although I'll admit I don't
know if I really even really contemplated it all too much
back then) and neither will I.
Too often people limit
themselves with arbitrary self-imposed limits on their performance.
To accomplish all that is possible, you've got to have big
dreams. In all areas of life, you've got to keep the
dream alive or life becomes stale. My running dreams
are still alive (although I'll admit that I constantly have
to remind myself to dream really big). Now only if
I could stay healthy......
PS: Many people, after
seeing how slowly the Marine Corps was won in this year
(2:28:28), have either emailed or called me to ask me if
I was having second doubts about my decision not to race.
Even my coach, John Kellogg called and said, "Don't
you think you could have limped you're was to the win?"
Quite honestly, I don't
know (although I'll admit that I actually think I would
have had to drop out) and don't really care. To try to limp
your way through a marathon is just plain stupid.
I'm not going to risk
suffering a "career-ending" (although I'm hesitant
to use the term career with my running as I really haven't
accomplished much of anything yet) injury to conduct some sick
intellectual exercise to see if I can limp my way to running
a marathon at 5:40 pace, which is roughly 20 seconds per
mile slower than what I would have hoped to run the race.
Additionally, there was no way to know going into the race
(or even at mile 20 of the race) to realize that the winning
time would be so slow.
PPS. Sorry for not
putting anything up about my decision on the training log
but I didn't really feel like talking about running last
week.
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