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Sad Song

Nobody wants to hear it!    It have had one of my more difficult weeks while my eye on the Tennessee State Finals this weekend.   I will fill you in shortly, but I need to offer up some hope before I dwell in sorrow and agony on end.  I am also going to use ever bad pun and saying ever created. I remember many years back the late great Dale Earnhardt Sr had a massive wreck in Nascar and broke his shoulder.  6 days later he won on the road coarse in Watkin Glen--he ran away with the race.  He had absolutely no business driving and kicked their butts plus he had never won on  road course.  Mind over matter for this one.  A couple years prior to that Ricky Rudd had a wreck at Daytona that should have killed him.  His eyes were swollen shut and 6 days later, he taped his eyes open and he won the next race.  Nikki Lauda almost was incinerated in a wreck in Germany in the early 70's and came back after recovering (partially) and missed the F1 Championship by 2 points.   And this stuff goes on and on.  Challenge the racer or athlete and they will jump up and punch you out and take your trophy... Nobody wants to hear the bitching and moaning, shut up and deliver if you want, but shut up first.   Whew, that may be a bit harsh--but it is real life and racing is real life.  The clock does not care.  

Ok, here is my misery and then I will shut up and race.  On Monday I was flying to Tulsa for work and knew when I was starting my day I was sick.  I had some intestinal distress and my energy level was about 10% of normal.  I was really dead in my tracks.    My trip was Nashville to St Louis and then change planes and on to Tulsa.  This should take 3.5  hours total time.  I wanted to get to Tulsa and crawl in bed asap. Of course, it was not gonna happen that way.   We had weather in Dallas and LaGuardia was socked in and messing up the works.  Our plane from St Louis was delayed on arrival, so we were delayed.  LaGuardia was cancelled, so we had a plane in the gate next door we could steal--which we did.  But we ended up 4 hours late to Tulsa and I was absolutely out of energy at that point.  I slept on some benches at the airport from absolute boredom and exhaustion and when I arrived in Tulsa I took a four hour nap, got up and ate--that was a lot of energy as well-- and then slept 12 more hours.  On Tuesday,  I was 70% and went to work.   Enough already--no not yet. Monday was a really long long day.

I went to  the track close by in Tulsa on Tuesday evening  to loosen up and felt OK, I need to stay ready for the State meet on Saturday and Sunday.  I had a good warm up and started to pick up some intensity and was doing some high steps at  85% speed into the prevailing wind and my left upper quad gave me a little tingle.  Crap--that had not happened in months!   I shut it down and returned to my room iced the upper thigh groin intersection and it felt pretty good today.  I have a 2XU thigh compression sleeve that made the pain go away and it worked fine at the track on today's warm up. 

So today, lets just throw some salt into the wound time, I was getting loose and my back was wobbling trying to jump out of joint.  If it goes out, I struggle to walk correctly.  I stretched the hell out of  it and did some light running and took a hot bath and now it is being iced .  I hope it holds together  along with a funky knee--from Birmingham --and whatever else pops up tomorrow and Friday.  I got two more days of opportunity to mess up the works.   I think I will stay off the track tomorrow and rest a lot of stuff.

To say the least, the lead up to State  training has been junk, but my attitude is pretty good and I will show what I got on Saturday and Sunday.  I will more than likely scratch the 400 on Saturday so I can save what I got left for the 100, 50 and 200 in that order.  But, I may feel like Hercules and run them all, we will see.  So, I am done with my sad song and you don't need to hear it. I will take my cue for the championship racers that have come before and showed how it is done.

This picture helps a lot, too.


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