Notes
I don't know what to tell you, I just ran a race even though I didn't feel right before or during the race. Something that hit me deep was Chapman's objectives for our pre-meet breakdown. He jokingly used a book that he wrote where he wrote more about how awesome he was than the actual story. He started it off with this joke but the message behind it was powerful. He talked about believing in oneself and how far you can go believing in yourself. If you ask Chapman or Spitz I have had a lot of races early in my career where Chapman says "what is Heinz doing, he is gonna blow up from this" and usually Spitz just watches knowing that I talked to him before and told him my crazy plan because I want to win my races and do something special along the way. Honestly coming in I was recruited to be a training partner for the backpack of the team and help out the backpack. I remember coming in telling Spitz my goal for my four years is just to run at a conference race. I think no one knew coming in that I could do stuff like this, but one key part is I just believed in myself the whole way. In those days where I was getting my butt kicked aerobically, I believed that I could reach the same fitness level as our top cross guy my freshman year, so I worked on my fitness and tripled every day for months in cross. I was told on let's on if I was a top 7 runner for Wartburg St. Olf was gonna easily win the region, I worked my butt off to be our sixth man on a top 5 national team. Then Junior year hit, and I was told I wasn't gonna be the same runner, but when COVID hit I got back home learned how to diet, and enjoy running again. Then this year I was told I wasn't a 5k guy, but I got out there and raced a dang 5k the way I wanted to and went sub 14:30. Now, going into the line where I didn't feel right and during the race where I fell off, Chapman yelled at me I could still win. It was a reminder, a reminder how I have gotten this far doing ridiculous things, and running a race is not too far off from achievable. So yeah, I shouldn't have raced that well for how I ran in it but I believed in myself and didn't doubt my abilities. So yeah, if you are reading this just know that I believe in you and you should believe in yourself because why not. Love you all and thank you for the support!