I arrived at the beautiful and historic Royal Roads University early, well slept and carbed up.

Decked out in OA green from head to toe. After a 15 min warmup my persistent old ankle injury was really bothering me and I was noticing a slight twinge of pain going down along the outside of my foot. I had Cara Obee kindly tape it up for a small donation to Doctors Without Borders. It felt quite stable after but I still had
my concerns. Nearly 12k of climbs and descents lay ahead.

The race started and I was in good form. My cardio is stronger than it has ever been. After about 2km I was within the front 15-20 of racers in a field of 150. Still being conservative because of my ankle I could have been further up. Every time we hit a steep climb I could easily pass a few people before the top. Most were walking and I had good power to charge right up past them. The intense jarring on the descents was causing an intolerable amount of pain and discomfort in my foot/ankle. I'll jump ahead to about 4K. My foot was in so much pain I had to walk. I had lost a lot of positions from having to stop but I still wanted to finish the race. I made one last desperate attempt at running but it just wasn't going to happen. The pain was unbearable. I had to drop out of the race. Luckily the course was looping back quite close to the start/finish area and I was able to hop off the trail there rather than having to struggle through several kilometers just to get back.

With my head held low I hobbled back to the start finish area and informed the officials of my DNF.
The 5K(shortcourse) racers were just finishing. As disappointed as I was I knew that I had made the
right choice by deciding not to continue.

Sigh... It feels like I might have a stress fracture in my foot or some sort of nasty stuff in my ankle.
It just hasn't healed well enough to take the abuse of a Gutbuster. I'm heading to the emergency for an
X-RAY. I hate hospitals and am not a fan of the standard medical system but I have little choice in
this matter. I have to know what is going on in there and why it isn't healing properly. I'll be back into weekly physiotherapy, acupuncture and spend a little money on proper injury rehabilitation instead of tackling it myself this time. I likely wont be running much until the next Gutbuster which is a over a month away. I *might* do the 5 K if everything checks out okay and I get the go ahead from the experts. If not then I won't be
too upset. Healing is more important than racing. I will likely continue with bike racing and training as I
know that I can do it without much stress to the injured areas. Care will be taken to brace my ankle and not cause it any undue stress.

I'm sorry for a disappointing report. I was hoping to post up about a wonderful race and a top 10
finish. I'm finally starting to have feelings about giving up running for many years. It's sad because
it was my main passion in life for a few years, and I credit running for igniting my passion for fitness, health, and helping my find my way towards veganism and the Organic Athlete Organization.

I've never DNF'd in a run before so this is a very sad day for me. A few tears were shed, both from physical pain and mental disappointment. You guys are so supportive and encouraging that I know I will be able to persevere through this and maybe it will be a good thing for me and help direct my focus more towards improving my cycling abilities.

Peace out

Kev