Notes
Had fun with the team on the bus and at the hotel. Some guys don't like riding the bus that long and stuff but I enjoy it because of the time I get to spend with my teammates. I love those guys and I'm excited to spend the next few years with the ones that won't be graduating. We went to bed right around 11, but I had trouble falling asleep. I didn't get much sleep throughout the night as I was awake much of the time. I'm not really sure why this was, but I couldn't really do anything about it. When we woke up I was tired, but not too bad. I ate a pretty good breakfast, trying to calculate exactly how much I should eat. I think I ate just about the right amount. We got to Oberlin and set everything up, then previewed the course. I wish we could have looked at it the night before so that I could have thought about it that night, and seen what it looked like. Not a huge deal though. While we were warming up my legs felt so great. I felt real nice and loose, without any soreness in my legs. I felt like I was about to kill it. When we lined up, I was in the second row, behind Nick, Jake, and Billy. When the gun went off it was pretty crazy with other teams sprinting out as fast as they could. Our guys really didn't get out well at all. I pretty quickly got in front of our guys in order to actually get out, but it was too late as we got closed off pretty bad. There was a lot of wrestling for position and whatnot. It was kind of weird at first because I wanted to maneuver through people, but I wanted to keep with my teammates, so I held off a little bit, looking back and making sure they were following me. I'm not really used to doing that. I've always just kind of run my own race. But it ended up working out. I led for about the first mile or so. Then as the race strung out a little bit our guys went from somewhat single file into a pack. There were 5 of us all together. Me, Nick, Billy, Jake, and Hoover. After going like that for a little while I noticed that Shane was right there behind me. We kept running as a pack for about 2.5 to 3 miles or so. Then I started feeling like I was working really hard to keep up with those guys. Slowly me and Shane started to drop off the group, and I was pretty disappointed that I couldn't keep up, but I was kind of glad I at least had Shane with me. Even though I wish he could have kept up as well. Me and Shane ran together for a mile or so, then he dropped behind me. The rest of the race I was alone, but I thought that Shane was still pretty close behind me. I felt pretty dead for some reason. I kind of struggled on the wood chips, and felt like my legs were slipping back. I think I thought about the course a little too much while I was running. I was kind of frustrated because in the past couple races I had been passing people steadily pretty much the whole race. But this time I passed some people, but people were passing me as well. I saw Hoover a little ways in front of me and tried to get with him, but it didn't work out. I guess Boyce was close to him as well but I only saw Hoover. When there was about 800 or so to go, I saw that I was getting closer to the finish, and realized that I had enough left in me to start to pick it up, especially now that the footing was better. I kind of underestimated how long I had left, but that worked to my advantage. From that point on I started passing people pretty steadily. I gradually picked it up more and more. I turned on the burners on the last straightaway. I passed a couple people at the beginning, then there was a gap between me and the next group. I kicked really hard and passed that group right before the finish. Overall I think I raced kind of poorly. I didn't do horrible, but I definitely feel as though I'm better than how I performed. I am proud of how I finished though. I am really excited for conference, and I'm gonna fight as hard as I can to prove myself and try to earn that 7th spot for regionals.