Notes
Race at Cornell. I felt that I'm in worse shape than last year so I put in a pretty cautious seed time of 4:39. Still made the fast heat and felt like I got out well and didn't actually feel as shocked by the speed as I thought I might. Felt like I was running well and really not too far off the front pack until lap 3-4. Was a little disappointed to see 2:16 at the half but also didn't think that is too bad. I felt like I ran well the second half and caught up to everyone that was in front of me other than the front 4 that pulled away. Caught the last guy down the homestretch with a decent kick (or at least I can feel that way without seeing splits), but obviously my second half was quite slow. Pretty crazy that I got 5th with that time considering there were 3 heats of the mile.
I'm not sure what to think after the race. I beat my seed time and ran 3 seconds slower than last year at Luther, while knowing in my head that I'm in worse shape than last year. So it feels like the outcome is what I expected and yet, I always have that glimmer of hope that the mile is just going to kick in and I'm going to shock myself like I have in the past. So while I think this is a solid race for my fitness, I probably have overperformed my fitness in the mile for too long and now have some disappointments coming with that. I probably wouldn't have been quite as disappointed if I didn't look back at my last few years and realize that I still ran 4:31 at my first mile after covid and basically 2 years off of racing. If I didn't have that one race, then I think I would be perfectly satisfied.
My goals for the year are to run more and race more. I'm trying not to get to caught up in results even. I just want to get back to having a stronger base and I think racing will come back to me if I can just do that.