Signed myself out today

It looks as if my 2010 outdoor track debut has been postponed.  I was scheduled to race on Friday at Stanford in the 10 000m but my tibialis anterior is telling me ‘no’. 

My tib started to get a little tight late last week and I buggered it up doing a track workout.  I get a tight tib every once in a while and I usually run through it but this time it’s worse than normal and quite inflamed. I spent a couple of days cross-training and then I resumed running but it didn’t heal as fast as I was hoping.  Today’s run was much better than Monday’s but it’s not at the point where I’m confident to put it through 10km on the track.   Flexing my foot up or down as far as I can is still painful.

The 10 000m race this weekend was to set-up the Brutus Hamilton 10 000m on April 24th.  At this point I don’t need to make this injury into something big.  Having dropped out of my last race I’d be worried that if I went out there to race and it was feeling bad I would be too stubborn to drop out.  When my tib is sore I tend to run on my toes more to skip some dorsi-flexion in my stride and that ends up straining my calf.  I feel that the potential downside to racing on Friday is bigger than the possible gains so I cancelled the flight, hotel and car rental.

The plan, as it stands, is to spend a couple of days cross-training to get healthy and then look for another race (road or track) to bust the rust before The Brutus Hamilton.  If I need a second 10 000m to hit my goal then I’ll have to look for another one later on, which may be harder than it sounds.

Around the Bay road race is this weekend and now I’ll be around to help out with New Balance at the Expo.  Here’s a pic I took a couple months back of the Bay with the bridge way in the background.