Sat 1/25 - 50 minutes incl. 5k in 15:17

The culmination of a week of frustration and exhaustion. Running late from the moment I woke up having realized that my alarm wasn't set properly, so it was a frantic scramble to get to the HS meet. After that was over, instead of getting a much-needed nap between meets I spent 2+ hours at the Brookline library. Got to the meet to find they were running ahead (not so much actually, but that was the rumor at the time) and so the warmup, such as it was happened entirely indoors. It's difficult to express how jangled my nerves were at this point, or how aware I was of my own deep-seated exhaustion. In this atmosphere of diminished expectations the tactics changed to hitting 36 second laps until I couldn't do it anymore, and hope to hell that I could for the entire race. As recently as six days ago this wouldn't seem too much to ask but that was before this shitshow of a week. As it was, the race ended up being another "smooth, relaxed, tired" effort to throw in the pile. Unlike a local yokel road race though, once the edge is lost on the track it gets old real fast. I ended up lasting 2k at 36s which felt very smooth, but then started slipping. Slowed in earnest by halfway, 3k in 9:04, 4k in 12:10. It was strictly autopilot for the second half of the race, punctuated by a serious (if momentary) thought of dropping out at two miles. Certainly there was nothing to prove by pressing on. In the end the decision to keep going was basically a "fuck you" to all the circumstances, both within and beyond my control, that contributed to this inevitable state of affairs. The various aches and pains in my legs that had been afflicting me all week disappeared in a surge of pre-race adrenaline, but afterwards they felt like garbage. Cooldown was a glacial 15 minute crawl.