I should have led with this in the Hyrox post. I was not at 100% going in.

I had a low key injury I was choosing to ignore. Not bad enough to stop me from walking around, just bad enough that a smart person would have skipped a race they hadn’t trained for. I signed up 10 days out, did zero prep, and never practiced with my partner. Skipping it was an option. I did not take it.

I finished in a good time. Heart rate pinned the whole way, most tired I have ever been, and the sled pull humbled me in a way I’m still thinking about. I stand by doing it. I do not stand by how I went about it.

Here’s the part I left out. For about a week afterward I could not do anything. No runs, no F45, barely any stairs. The kind of tired where a short walk feels like a workout. Turns out a hard race on an ignored injury sends the bill later, with interest.

The bigger cost was the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon. I had been quietly hoping to run it this fall, and that is now off the table. No race week post, no bib photo, no countdown. Just me, a calendar, and a lesson I apparently had to learn the dumb way.

So that’s where things stand. I am Above Average at ignoring warning signs, which is not the kind of above average I was going for.

What now: heal properly, ease back into running, and stop signing up for things on a whim. Probably. I’ll keep you posted on how well that goes.