Notes
Felt pretty good about how I ran today. Coach Kenny's advice was during the second mile to envision yourself passing a person every second (obvious an exaggeration, but it got the point across). I think that concept definitely described how I ran. My start wasn't all that fast, but I quickly caught up with Hammond, and just kept working my way forward. A bit before the 1 mile mark I was about 18th, in the woods I got to 12th, and by the time I popped out of the woods I was in the top 10. By the 2 mile mark, I think I was top 5. For about a half mile around the corn fields I was even leading the race! I simply passed people until there was no one else to pass. Unfortunately in the last 1/2 mile, one guy passed me, and then two more lost me at the kick.
4th in the JV race.
8th on HHXC (Cahill beat me by 15-20 seconds).
There was a fair bit of rain in the past couple days, so the ground was pretty soggy, and by the time of the JV race it was starting to get torn up + muddy. I absolutely know that my time would have been better with drier weather. Still, I improved my time from last year, and feel a whole lot better about how I ran.
My main strategy for this race was simply to stay loose, both mentally and physically. During the past week Coach talked to us about keeping your whole body relaxed, but still running hard, and I managed to do that today. Within the first 1/4 mile, I could tell that my body wanted to try to tense itself up and try to pick up the pace so that I could get to the front, but by letting my form slip a little bit (loose legs and arms, rather than stiff, precise movements) I found that I could run at the same pace, but it felt a whole lot easier. As I went through today I tried to keep that going for both my mind and every other part of my body, and the next thing I knew, there was no one else in front of me. The last mile I got pretty tired, but it went by so fast that I didn't even have time to "negative self-talk" myself. Kick probably should have been a bit faster, but I still love the way I ran today.