Notes
A comment from the future... but what I remember. The second race of my slump. Freshman/Sophomore meet @ Dighton-Rehobeth. This is the meet that I had planned on breaking 5 at... until I did at Notre Dame. Had hoped to shake off my last race and run sub-5 again at this meet. Ran in the fastest heat. Ryan Moran was the other Pembroke runner. He ended up finishing at 5:05. I stuck with him for the entire race, with him outkicking me in the last 200 or so. Again the question arises: was i lazy? As Z pointed out, I certainly didn't feel absolutely terrible I just raced my absolute hardest after the race. I've thought a lot about this race, and I've decided to chalk it up to some racing mistakes, which I can hopefully learn from. For starters, I think I can say that physically, I am capable of running a sub-5 mile. The rest has to do with mind state, pacing, and mental toughness. As Z pointed out, I should not have relied on Ryan Moran to pace me through the race. Z told a story about him in Cross Country, where as a freshman he saw the teams top runner racing ahead of him. Z was feeling good, and saw the top runner was really hurting. Although he was hurting, Z saw that the top runner was not running that fast a pace. And so Z passed him. Z said that since Moran was coming off an injury and an off season, I should have led him through the race. Perhaps he might have still ran a faster time than me-in that case though, we both would have run faster. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we allowed the pack to get away from us. As Z said after, the race got out faster than we would like in the first lap; not US, but the race. The pack was therefore ahead of us on lap 2, but we were still on pace. At the time Z shouted, " It's gonna come back, now work it." Although the pack was ahead of us, it ultimately was going to finish in the range of times that we wanted to finish in ourselves. We therefore should have strove to not lose ground to the pack, in the hopes that it would slow down and allow ourselves to catch up to it. Instead, we slowly lost ground and fell off the pack, struggling to run our race alone. Our pace therefore slowed and we ran a slower race than we wanted to. At League Meet (which I am pretty sure I will run in) I am going to have to try my best to stay with the pack no matter what and run a fast time. My goal according to Joe K. is to run 4:55 or better.