Notes
Gonna be a lot of "f" bombs in this one because idk what other word to use.... you've been warned
First off we had a terrible box. It was halfway on this limestone path and the grass. I had one foot on each part. Gun goes off and I immediately was pinned in. Tried to move someone with some typical cross country moves, ya know, move guys at the hip throw some light bows. But this one Cornell dude (who probably didn't even finish in the top 100) shoved me straight to the ground. If you look in the picture I had a smile on my face.... because I thought the race would get called back! I did a head first slide on the grass and wasn't able to get up until the entire field had passed me. I got up and threw my arms in the air shouting for a restart. It was probably about 5 seconds of me jogging in disbelief before I realized I wasn't getting a restart.
Turbo engaged. I sprinted to catch back up to the field. Tried my best to bob and weave through traffic. A couple Wash U guys tripped over the cone and I almost smacked into a tree that was in the middle of the course. I said "excuse me" and "pardon me" and "can I squeeze through quick?" a number of times. No body would fricken budge. I will note though that I did catch up to Frosty and Heinz and (in Forsty's words) they parted like the Red Sea for me. After the first turn I said screw it and tight rope walk styled my way onto the out of bounds line and tried to get around the field on the straight away. After much struggle and perseverance, I made it to the front.
But I was still getting shoved and pushed around so I said fuck that and went to the front and dropped everyone. I heard some guy say "really man?!" And I just thought fuck yeah, that was bullshit, I shouldn't have had to work that hard to get to the front and the race should have been restarted. I was pretty gassed ngl. I used so much energy and to get to where I was I was just a tad worried I was gonna run out of steam by the end.
Throughout the race I just kept my eyes on the gator and listened to people telling me how big of a gap I had. I maintained about a 25-40 meter gap the whole time. I was just so worked up at the beginning. I knew we had a plan, but I was just shoved around so much that I had had enough of it. I really made sure to hammer the 4th mile because I heard "Lucas" being called behind a bunch. Didn't want that guy to think he had any chance of catching me.
Christopher you have no idea how pumped I was when I heard you broke that guy and we locked down a 1-2 finish, that was huge.
The entire team finally ran well at a bigger regular season meet. I feel like we are all finally experienced and poised enough to run well mid-season. 6 guys sub 25?! Really looking forward to essentially hitting the snooze button for the next 3 weeks before Regionals/Nationals.