"They can come down to me!"

Today was one of those days. If you are a fellow athlete, no further explanation is needed. If I didn't need food to survive I probably wouldn't even move from the exact spot I'm in now for the rest of the day, that's how tired my soul is. Yes, my soul. It's not just my physical body that is hurting, it goes waaaay deeper than that. When I saw my workout for today on the sheet at the beginning of the week, I knew I was in for an unpleasant day come Friday. The last time I did a similar workout, I had half the intervals I had today. But like coach always says, "you're better today then you were last time you did the workout." Yea, whatever. Personally, I prefer to let my body adapt slowly, but he very rarely agrees with me.

As I finished my last 300 of the workout, I immediately dropped to the ground and sprawled out on my back. You could have outlined me in white chalk right then and there because I had the silhouette spot on. Anyone who knows me or has ever practiced with me knows I'm an on the ground kind of person. Always. Some people say you shouldn't do this. Why? Well for starters because it's hard to recover like this. You need to keep moving and keep the blood from pooling and letting the lactic acid build up...yadda, yadda, yadda. But it's also because it might make you look weak and like you're broke down. Well guess what?! I'M BROKE!!! I happen to not care if every single competitor I'll ever race this season sees me in the fetal position after a hard workout, whimpering to myself and crying out to Jesus. I'm a beast when it comes to competition, but practice--I'm more like a cub. So be it.

So as usual, Coach comes over in his entirely too chipper voice and tells me to get up. I usually ignore the first two or three times because it's possible that I've also developed a bit of deafness during this ass-kicking of a workout. I groan and grunt a couple of times, then I open my mouth to actually protest and tell him that I actually can't move just yet because it's just not physically possible. Let me be! He then proceeds to ask me what I plan on doing after the Olympic Finals when they come to interview me after my race. My response: "They can come down to me."