Notes
Indoor Track Nationals 2016 at Grinnell College. DMR 1200 lead-off leg. DMR finished 10th overal with a time of 10:15. I'm not entirely sure if this was my split, but if i remember correctly, somewhere online it gives the splits of each leg and this was mine from what grammy was saying. this time is not really indicative of the race i ran, but it is what it is. i started in the second waterfall but had a pretty shitty start. i almost falsestarted because there was a longer pause than i anticipated before the gun so my first couple steps were bad and the eau claire guy elbowed me back right away. after almost getting pushed into the first waterfall area and cut off, i was in last in my waterfall by the 100 which got me kinda pissed but whatever. when the waterfalls merged i didnt even try to move up really and just assumed the back of the pack so i could avoid all of the useless jockeying and pushing. part of me wishes that i had been more aggressive earlier on, but i wanted to make sure i ran a smart race. i stayed at the back and called every tiny move to make sure i was connected to the pack and then i started kicking with 400 to go and really only passed people the last 150 or so. i ended up handing off in 6th so i passed 6 people, but really all 12 teams were "right there" so had my leg been just a little bit longer, i wouldve probably been handing off in 2nd or 3rd because i was catching everyone. however, it wasnt longer and when i got to the homestretch, i noticed that 6 or 7 400 guys were lined up front to back so the handoff ended up being a huge clusterfuck, i got the baton to kyle but it was definitely slower than i would have liked because of all of the traffic. this is what made my split drastically slower i believe. anyhow, he got passed by 2 people during his leg, which is hard to do on this track with wide turns so that didnt help our case either. runnion got the baton in basically no man's land and ran a little slower than i expected, and finally kenny got the baton in 9th, and went out hard in an effort to catch the top 8 but he ended up dying off. overall, it was a fun and exhilarating race, but one i definitely wish i could redo. i really wanted to have us be all-american because it would have been a great experience, but it just didnt work out that way. its hard to do that when the relay is scrapped going in too. at any rate, it was good nationals experience and something i would definitely want to be a part of in the future and next time we can actually stick our nose in and "be there"