Madrid Recap: More Downs Than Ups

I was feeling pretty good in my last post, then soon after, one of my molars started killing me. I could barely eat from that point on. I went to the pharmacist and was given some dental spray and pills for the pain, but neither worked that well and all the pills did was make me drowsy. I didn't want to use the pills the day of the meet, but I had no other option because the pain is too excrutiating, so needless to say, the meet didn't go well from my standpoint.

For the first round, I was in the second heat, lane 4. I wasn't really firing in the warm-up and was very sluggish. This track has to have the worse lane 4 in the world! It has a serious dip one step into the race. I stumbled out of the hole and ended up kneeing myself in the jaw going over the first hurdle. Aries Merritt was in lane 3, and I always hate it when he's on my immediate left side. For about 5-6 hurdles he was catching my lead arm on my upswing with his lead arm on it's downswing. I ended up winning the heat just barely ahead of him, we ran slow as hell, 13.74-13.75.

Here's where it got crazy. The pain reliever stuff wore off, and with me kneeing myself in the first round, my mouth felt like somebody hit me in the jaw with a pole! I tried to do a little jogging but I was hurting too bad, my plan was to just laid down and put my feet up on a hurdle until they called us to go to the track, but I did a start to the first hurdle that I shouldn't have done. Clenching my teeth coming out caused excrutiating pain, so at this point I couldn't wait for this race to end. I got out to the track, set my blocks and watched everyone else do starts. The final was okay, I got out slow, killed the 7th hurdle and sat on number 10 and ended up coming second place with a time of 13.45, Ron Bramlett won with a 13.44. I didn't warm down, I hopped right on the 10pm shuttle back to the hotel, I was hurting too bad.

I finished eating and went to the room and double-dosed on the medication. All my boys went out to eat at Friday's, but I couldn't make it. I told my mom what was going on and she called my dentist at home in Denver. He got back with her and with all my symptoms, he unleashed the bad news that I need a root canal! I'm going to Monaco later on today, so I will see how the pressure on the airplane is because I can't just hop on an eight plus hour flight, feeeling on the verge of death. I am suppose to get some antibiotics when I get to Monaco to help the pain and the toxins that are in my system. I think I am going to have to go home after the Monaco meet even though I still have a few more competitions left. I have to take care of this problem before World Championships and I have no idea what the recovery time is. I will keep you posted.