Is there such a thing as over stretching. I stretched extensively yesterday for 30 minutes, much more than I usually do. Today I ran a 5k and I felt great going into the race. I opened with a 6:00 mile right on pace but my legs weren't feeling vey good. Mile 2 I was at 13:00. The last mile I actually had to stop twice and I have never DNFed or even stopped running during a race. I finished in 22:20 and it was the worst race of my life. After the race I did a 2 mile cool down and felt much better. Why did I feel so much better during the cool down and so terrible during the race?