Notes
Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
2014 Liberty League Indoor Champs @ SLU, in the 3k w/ Colin & Bobby. Feeling great after last week's race, so wanted to go out and run sub 9 today. Wasn't sure how the race was gonna play out, seeing as 3 St Lawrence guys were doubling back from earlier events, so wanted to go out and run 3 flat pace no matter what and see what happened. It was a great, competitive race. Small field, so didn't worry too much about my spot and tucked in towards the back for the first lap or two, right on Colin. Bobby, Scotty, and an RIT kid quickly pulled away, about 600 I saw the rest of the pack starting to break and moved up onto Patterson's shoulder, sitting 5th with Colin right behind. We started clicking off 35.x - low 36s, came through the 1k just over 3. Was feeling pretty good, so I thought what the hell, lets pass Patterson now. Not so easy! Every straight I would surge and go wide, and he would speed up to hold me off before settling back in. Holy crap was it frustrating. We were still running 35-36 with the surge, but not too efficient. Finally about a mile into the race Trevor Bibb caught us and created a little chaos, Patterson moved outside to block me and Colin passed by on the inside. Then I made my key move for the race, ran hard and passed both SLU guys on the next straight, Bibb actually boxed Patterson in. A little fuzzy on the rest of the race, I may have led Colin for 2 laps, maybe not, I think by 600 he had gotten a few meters on me and never let it up. Last 1k was tough! It was great though, one lap at a time and ran hard all the way.
Very pleased with the race. First off, 17 second PR, puts me 18th on the states list so should be in. ~8:53 after the conversion so VERY close to ECACs. Purdy gives it a 9:42 so definitely a sub 9:40 outdoor equivalent, could NOT ever imagine running like that in HS. Very well run competitive race, once again things didn't go ABSOLUTELY perfect but I responded well. I could easily have seen me settling for 7th today but I came to race. Honestly, felt GREAT through the 1k and even through the 1600, raring to go the whole time. We were at 6:02-6:03 I believe at 2k so last 1k was ~2:56 (I believe coach said 2:22 for the last 800).
Interesting to note that I've now set my PRs for mile and 3k and at 178.6 lbs, can DEFINITELY improve on that...
And the final note, in my opinion the most exciting thing about today's performance: According to Purdy, today's 3k is worth a 4:28.95 mile.... meaning THE MILE IS NOT MY BEST EVENT!!! For a while I thought I would never figure out anything but the mile and my performances would always lag in everything else, but clearly that is not the case! GREAT sign for steeple + XC!
Also should be noted that I took caffeine before my race today, don't know if it made a difference but what the heck, will do it again. Pumped for the rest of the season, last year the season goal was to make states, I did it, but then I bombed. This year I am ready to roll! Coach had some good thoughts after the race, basically he said (from my understanding) that the high mileage was good in periods, but that in order to take advantage of the intensity of our training and workouts I had to bring it down a bit (to the level I'm at now). Which would explain why I was pretty flat early season. So probably keep it around here for now, bump up for some solid volume in March, then drop back down for some hard work in outdoors and finally taper for the steeple come championship time.
Hard work is paying off, no stopping here though, onwards and upwards!