Jefferson College 5K Race Report- DNF

This weekend I was in action at the Jefferson College 5K and after the previous weekends success I was excited to give it another go. I knew I would be going head to head with my Roanoke Valley Elite teammate, Andrew Parkins. I knew he was going very well and even though I wouldn't beat him I knew I would get a workout in trying to hold onto him for as long as I could.

The beginning of the race... all is well.

After we pre-ran the course and chatted with some others at the start line it was time to go. The gun fired and we were off! I immediately tucked in behind Andrew with the first quarter of a mile on a downhill, we were cruising. We took a left over the Memorial Bridge which was a slight uphill and I was still holding on just fine. As we crested the bridge and headed down the other side, Andrew turned up the pace a bit and I was able to sit tight making our way to the turns leading onto the Greenway. Through the first right turn off the bridge I was good, but as we made the second turn I felt a pop in my left hip that sent a shooting pain up my body! I tried to shake it off going into the left turn on the Greenway and it popped again and this time it continued to hurt! I saw my pace slowly deteriorating and Andrew started moving ahead of me. He started yelling for me to pick it up, but I couldn't. I was broken...

The guy behind me caught up to me as I now was a minute slower than before and I tried to hang on to him just to stay in the top three but the pain became unbearable so I had to stop. Eric Fonville came rolling by and asked me how I was doing... I let him know I was OK and cheered him on. He eventually finished up third overall! Way to go Eric! I continued to walk the course as the rest of the runners came by and cheer them on. I had a lot of friends do really well in the race so I was very happy for them so it was still an awesome day to be out there.

I have had trouble with piriformis syndrome in my hip in the past and I knew that I had just jacked it up pretty good again. Now, I have to take some time off from running to let this calm down and hopefully limit my down time since I am planning on doing the Seashore 50K in mid December. I am still able to bike and swim so we shall see how it goes. I have the Star City Half Marathon in a couple of weeks, but depending on my recovery this may just need to be a large group run. Stay tuned...