Thanks Dazzler...but hopefully I'm not a complete hazard to the rc world...so I feel like I have to explain a few things that I left out initially because my first post was long enough already!
I have a smart stop cutoff from my bashing car that I now use used in my club car every week...but knowing that a single race only used about 800mah-1000mah (having measured it many times), I'd previously decided it was a low risk and sometimes I didn't swap it into my club car. So calculated risk, and the 2 or 3 times it did seem to run down I stopped immediately, just as the warning label on the battery tells you to.
Also, I re-read my charger manual and the "charge capacity" setting I mentioned does not over charge the cells...it's a safety feature for preventing it! So I can strike that one off the list
All in all I know I should have been more careful but the battery hasn't blown up and no harm has come to anyone or anything, I just have a battery that's died prematurely.