Notes
Awesome race! Surprised myself a bit but at the same time I wasn't surprised. At the beginning of the season I knew the fitness was there for something like this, but after 3 not so good races I was beginning to doubt that. Now of course I feel like I can go even faster but I guess I'll have to wait.
Race was near perfect. A bit cold but good for a 5k. Went out right behind Nolan and was there for most of the race, just made sure there were no gaps and passed people when they were falling off. Clicked off perfect 76/77s the whole way. Splits were really even up until the last 800 when we closed pretty hard (74, 67). I was really tempted to make a move earlier on the last mile but I was patient and it definitely paid off because I actually had a kick.
Best college race by far and first one that really felt like I've made some progress over the last 2 years so I'm really happy with it. I don't think I have ever been so ecstatic finishing a race and seeing my time. Unfortunately the season is over so it's time to shift focus and put in another solid summer and crush XC!
Sophomore year analysis:
I can say undoubtedly that this year has been the strongest and most consistent year in terms of my training, and it finally showed in the last race. I think that increasing my mileage helped a lot with that, so I'll be looking to keep moving in that direction this summer. Cross country was pretty average this year, certainly a step up from last year. Had a couple solid races but still need to work on being consistent and focused in longer races... I think racing the 5k a lot this season taught me a lot about how to be patient and focused in a race so I'll be looking to translate that to the 8k. Moving onto indoor, nothing really special until the last race where I ran a 1 second pr in the mile, nice to run a pr but still don't think it was indicative of my fitness. The weeks after indoor and through the outdoor season were definitely the best weeks of training I've ever strung together. My only main goal was to go under 16, which I felt that it wasn't too big of a goal to reach based off of my fitness, but it took some learning how to run a 5k to finally do it. I was hoping that running what I did would also be enough for LL but it's just very competitive this year. I knew looking at my training that a breakthrough race was coming, and now I think that there's still more left to see, and by August I hope I'll be even fitter.