Notes
2014 NCAA Atlantic Regional meet hosted by UR at Genesee Valley State Park.
I'll stick to talking about the race for now, leave the more reflective stuff for another time. Tried to approach this race like any other, I was excited as heck but knew that it would be all too easy to wreck myself early on and that running smart and giving myself a chance to do well was important. So I made sure NOT to go out too hard, hung back off the line. I was actually pretty worried, as soon as the field converged it got super crowded, pretty much came to a full stop at one point and was afraid I had buried myself and was gonna come through super slow. But still hit the mile at 5:15 though so it was all cool. After 1k there was more room to breathe and I was able to start moving up. Caught and passed Tyler just before 2k (he fell very early in :( ), 6:36.8 / 126th place, more or less exactly where I wanted to be. Just tried to keep that same effort on loop 2 and steadily move up. Felt pretty strong, 6:41.8 which was reasonable, moved up a lot (97th place). The plan was to really attack on the 3rd loop, we knew that that's when people would really be falling apart. Felt like I was doing some work but, eh, not really. 6:48 / 84th place. Passed Steve just after 6k, led him for maybe the next k and change before he passed me back and ultimately put about 6 seconds on me. The last 2k was pretty stressful, I knew that me and Steve were 5 and 6 and that we were almost certainly further back than we needed to be, was running as hard as I could but wasn't making up any ground. 6:49, lost spots for the first time in the race to finish 90th.
Was NOT very happy with this after the race. Just felt like I didn't really do my part. Especially looking at the splits now, the guy RIGHT behind me at 6k closed in 6:30 and finished 69th... Anyways, I think it's easy to be disappointed, but really I can't be too torn up. Obviously I was looking to have a race-of-a-lifetime, knock it out of the park type experience, and that didn't. I just had another solid race, about what I would expect based on the season to date. Haven't looked too closely yet at comparing UR today vs SPAC, but the courses probably ran pretty similar - this was probably my best race of the season. I think I executed the plan fine, certainly shouldn't have gone out any faster and going out slower would realllly have put me far back. I was just hoping I would have more in the second half of the race, and I didn't. But again, can't be too upset.
Team ran GREAT today, it wasn't the kind've race that everyone had hoped for in their wildest dreams by any means, but the guys executed. Jake and Faz nailed down some well deserved NCAA spots, and Brian and Bobby blew everyone out of the water on the last 2k to get the team spots we needed. Tyler and Steve ran well considering some external factors they had to deal with (Tyler obviously falling, Steve I believe was having breathing troubles). Here's hoping we get one more!