Notes
2013 LL Championships @ Bard College. A fast course despite some muddy conditions and tight turns (short?). Yet another victory for SLU, but a great showing by the team, looking good for things to come.
I had a GOOD race. Smart and tough which are always the two goals. Start was pretty crazy, we did two field loops which had some tight muddy turns and were very crowded. Almost got forced into the woods from the start and then practically came to a standstill when some bozo fell on the rosebush turn. Then I went down at the start of the second loop, but I BOUNCED and was on my feet again like nothing. Put in a quick surge to get back in a good spot and overall thought I did a good job of shaking it off and not worrying about it. Came through the first mile feeling like we were running a fair pace but pretty much exactly where I wanted to be. Once we hit the road for the first half of mile 2 I just started to try and steadily pick off guys and move up while running an even pace (just passing people who went out too hard). Most of the second half of mile 2 was a long grassy uphill, I figured this would be the hardest part of the course and went to work earlier than usual, increased the effort a little and passed a lot of people going up the hill. Hit the turnaround and the start of mile 3 and had a moment of post-hill induced doubt, then threw it into gear and the race began. Grinded through mile 3 and most of mile 4 at a good pace, kept moving up and passing people. 3 mile split was ~16:15 (5:25 pace), who knows how accurate that is though. Mile 4 had a nice steep downhill followed by a road segment to cruise on. Then we went back onto the muddy trail and I lost a lot of momentum and had a hard time getting it back. The wheels pretty much fell off on mile 5, I was running hard and didn't fall apart by any means but I had a really hard time keeping any sort of rhythm with all the turns and I pretty much just held my spot. The last soccer field loop was tough, I felt like I was running fast but wasn't gaining any ground on the group ahead of me.
So probably my best race of the season, as mentioned it was mostly smart (after mile 1 was moving up the entire time except for getting passed at the start of mile 5) and tough (very focused the whole time), I'm pretty happy with how I ran it. New PR (for whatever that's worth...) and was 53 / 125 (last year 71/131), also SLU ran 12 guys at a silly meet Thursday instead of today who I would have beaten. So definitely a better placement than last year.
So was I happy with this season? No, not really.... not really at all. Mostly felt like a lot of work for minimal payoff. Ok, sorry, I'll cut it with the feeling bad for myself crap. It was my best and most consistent season of xc to date, I feel like I'm in good shape and confident that good things are coming. There are always adjustments to be made, can always train harder/smarter and do more stuff right. No one knows when big breakthroughs are going to come, its and n=1 experiment and just need to keep plugging away.
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
-- Jacob August Riis
Holy crap am I good at motivating myself
EDIT: May have been cheated out of two places by Bard's crappy timing system.