I was pretty smashed after the last round of the World Cup where I had slogged my guts out, then with just one days rest I attempted to be competitive at Sprint the bay….

The first race really didn’t go my way, my body was still sore and my mind just wasn’t there either. I conceded time early on making poor route choices and not running fast enough. I couldn’t keep my mind up and then combined with the rain I made mistake after mistake. My biggest came on one near the end, where I almost skipped a control, then had to back pedal to get to the right place. I pushed really hard and I was absolutely hammered by the time I finished. I felt quite ill, my legs were sore and struggled to do some sort of warm down…

By the time the second race came around the mind was back, only thing was the body was still really sore. I ran hard anyway, and for the majority of the race navigated well, maybe a poor route here and there but on the whole it was going well until coming through the spectator area on the last loop. My legs were tight beforehand and then they started to get tighter until my hamstring went ping. It wasn’t too bad at the time… well that’s what I told myself… but I was slowed down significantly. I stumbled through to the finish ok in the end, but when I tired to warm down my leg was in a significant amount of pain. Not good.

Some intense recovery I was hoping was going to help, but when I woke up in the morning with lingering pain I knew it wasn’t good. However I got dressed and ready to go, but on the warm up it was clear I wasn’t going to get far. I started anyway with the intention of walking if needs be, which after about the second control became a reality. Then a few more controls and I decided I wasn’t enjoying it so I flagged it, DNF’ed and pulled out. Sprint the Bay over for me.

I could have gone home at this point but I hung around and spent a bit of time watching, not really that disappointed surprisingly…but it would have been nice to run… So more rest and recovery. I have canned the idea of giving the Coast to Coast run a crack and Im fully focused on getting back to a point where I’m going to be in a good position to have a good crack at Avalanche Peak again!