Track and Field Blogs - Patrick Rizzo

It is no secret that 2008 was a pretty rough year for me. January started off as a good training month. I ran the Disney World Half-Marathon and ran a (albeit not stellar) PR. February started fantastic and I set my goal for Boston at 2:15. With the training we did in Florida and with how my fitness was looking at the end of last year, this seemed realistic.

Enter the impact of a Jeep Wrangler to my training. I blogged on here about my accident. Nick and I were getting our last couple of miles in on a run when a Jeep slid sideways into me (Nick dodged it, somehow). The next two months were spent trying to be able to break 7-minute pace again, then deciding whether to scrap the whole idea of racing Boston. There was the option of training for it and not racing if I did not think my fitness was up to par; I could take downtime, recover, and run the 25k with the other group of guys; the last option was to go forward like the thickheaded, stubborn bastard I am and act as though nothing happened. You can guess which I chose to pursue.

Boston was arguably the worst racing experience I have ever had. I could not keep fluids down; my stomach was locked up all morning; my fitness was questionable at best due to the significant amount of training I missed. Nothing really went my way that day, but I scraped out a 2:24:27 with the help of the Red Cross aid stations and fans cheering me through the urge to call it quits on my stellar 8-minute miles near the end.

May got off to a rough start as well. While out in Phoenix (the most beautiful place on earth) visiting some friends, I got word that my grandmother passed away and I had to find a way back to Chicago right away. My hip had finally started to heal up though, and running was looking good.

June was probably my best training month I have ever had in Michigan. It was looking like I would race New Haven 20k and do some other speed stuff all winter before shooting at Boston 2009…then came July.

By the beginning of July, my back and hip were starting to give me trouble again in the same places as they did after the accident. I thought nothing of it as I have never had a problem with injury in my life. I tend to be the guy that can freefall out of a plane at 30,000 ft. without a parachute and come out with just scratches. I brushed it off when the pain intensified and just got more massage work and chiropractic to get things tolerable. Then one run it hurt so bad that I could not even push through. I had to stop and walk for a while just to be able to jog back to the duck pond where my car was waiting. That was my last run for 3 weeks and it was back to starting all over.

Coming off of that, I did not get to race at all from May 31 until October 5. Even at that, it was just to be used as a tempo run at a local half-marathon with three teammates. Training shoes, tempo run, and all I came within a minute of a PR, which reinforced that I was in good shape once again. My hip was still giving me trouble on some cross-country workouts, but being proactive with treating it got me through (though it is STILL giving me trouble as I write this..thanks ice!).

A 10k road PR in November had me believing that I should do pretty well at the USATF Club Cross Championships. But tactically I ran a poor race there and failed to get the year-end reinforcement that I was looking for.

That will draw an official end to my 2008 racing season (or lack thereof) and hopefully turn the page onto a much brighter note for 2009. May 2009 bring all of us a new set of PRs and breakthroughs that we have worked so hard for. May it satisfy our competitive spirit just long enough to celebrate and go on to make more improvements from there.

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