Race Report: 2 of 2

As it turns out, I'm not 20 anymore and need more than 24 hours to recover between races. I felt every spike clad kilometer of yesterday's XC race in my hams, quads, calves and gluts as I warmed up this morning. Aside: how is it that swimmers can swim a half dozen events in a single day let alone week-end and do them all well without, it seems, there being any cummulative fatigue effects? Missy Franklin swam a heat of one event in the Olympics and came back twenty minutes later to win the gold medal in a final of another... at the Olympics! And while I really don't mean to compare myself to a world class athlete, I am really curious about the differences between the two sports. Swimmers can get away with doubles, triples, quadruples... they are the fertility clinic of sporting events. Why can't runners do that? I don't think there is a middle distance runner in the world who could run heats of a 1500 m and then come back 20 minutes later and win an 800 m at a world class event. Is it the lack of impact in swimming? Is it that swimmers heart rates are typically lower than runner's heart rates? Is is the duration of the events? I don't think even runners who do sprints could get away with running as many events as a typical world class swimmer swims.

Anyhow needless to say 24 hours was not enough for me to begin recovering from yesterday's effort and I found myself rapidly revising my goal during the warm-up from "break 38" to "break 40". I actually offered to run with Thing 1 to give hubby a break and to make it clear to myself that I could not really race but there were bouncy castles at this race so Thing 1 was sooooo not interested in being strapped into the Bob for 40 minutes.

It was a weird race body wise because for once my breathing was not a factor... the rate limiting stuff was all going on muscularly in the legs, they simply could not turn over and I felt like my nervous system was not firing properly. The splits tell the story, despite always feeling like I was expending the same effort on a windstill, flat course, they were all over the map:

4:03 (slowest km of the race)
3:38 (fastest km of the race)
4:03
3:54
3:43 (seriously, no change in perceived effort) - 19:22 at 5 km
3:57
3:53
3:43
3:56
3:49 - total time 38:41.

So I am officially raced out. I am good. No need to rouse the family out of bed on a week-end morning again anytime soon. No more racing until Oct. 14.