Blake Bennions running

Looking at the main 4 meets that utah teams went to over the weekend I have decided that in order to finish 2nd team all-state, I need to be running with Cubby, or at least a significantly closer. Yesterday he finished 24 seconds ahead of me, my goal for Park City is to break 16:00, if I do this I think I will be pretty close to Cubby's time, probably within 15 seconds. Looking at Lehi and Timpagnogos, their guys aren't really that fast, I'm not scared of any Lehi guys, but together they make a really strong team. Valdosta State in Georgia just called me while I was writing, its cool to hear from colleges! I should get in touch with Southern Utah again, they might be more intrested to talk to me now that I've run a lot faster for everything. And I will have to wait on Utah State, maybe I will visit Mr. Gensel after the USU indoor meet if I can and talk to him. I'm really excited to see where I will end up, if I don't go to SUU or USU, I want to go to a coast school, east or west coast, but probably east. I think I will go on a 4 mile run soon, its a nice day, I feel like a light excercise and I am kind of motivated to beat some of American Fork's guys and start running with some better guys. 

Ran a little over 4 miles, about a mile with my brother, great day for running, cool and sunny.

Ran the gully paired up with girls from the girls team, I ran with Sarah. It was a time trial for them. It was a rainy, slightly cold day, I felt good once the run got going. I think we can win park city and I think I can take a top 10 spot. State is looking kind of bleak, but I think region will be a solid victory for Alta as long as we all show up and do our job. So I think the next two meets should be wins, and hopefully that will give us enough confidence to do something spectacular at state, I feel like we need to focus more on state and less on Nike, I think it's the more important meet, unless we are serious about taking top 4 at Nike.

Am- 5.8 miles.

After school- 6 miles during a 45 minute run with a 100 meter sprint every 5 minutes. Pretty easy workout, but uncomfortable. Timpanogos signed up for park city so now its a battle for 2nd pretty much. I think we will take 2nd pretty comfortably, since we lost a tie to wasatch at herriman, Chase has come back and Ashton had a bad race that week. So we should beat wasatch. But we won't know for sure until its over. My goal is to break 16:00, get top 10, beat a lot of timpanogos guys.

YES!!! Running sub 40:00 gully wasn't how I expected it to be or when. But it was amazing! We split into groups for todays run and staggered the start, Zach went first, 2 minutes later Ashton went, then Cubby and Chase, then Davis, Read and I. We were on pace but I wasn't really worrying about anything, I was just trying to keep running hard. This is a really good example of how running as a group can really help, it pushed me to know that Davis and Read were counting on me to run fast with them! This was a really good run! I'm really happy I got to do this workout! Oh, and happy birthday to Coach Murphy!

I've been doing more core, stretching, and hip flexor/calf workouts at home, and today was pretty killer! I did a good workout with abs and hip flexors and then 65 push ups which was suprisingly hard, and then I went straight into a 100 second plank from that, it normally wouldn't be much but since my shoulders were already hurting, it was pretty good. Then I did 200 bicycle kicks and 100 calf raises on each leg to finish if off. Sometime I eat some unhealthy foods, like m&ms to motivate me to go do core.

Premeet day. It was easy and good. Tomorrow we play timpanogos and mountain view, I just need to start believing I should be beating all of these guys. I deserve to be beating them and they have no business beating me. I am going to run my race tomorrow, 5:20s across the board. And at the end, it doesn't matter who I'm running against, I'm going to run my best and do very very well.

This was Saturdays run, but I accidentally put the race there. I ran 12 miles with Cubby and Davis, we went through the gully over to 8000 south, and then up to 7th east and ran back to Alta, then I did half a mile on the track to get 12. I might do 3-4 tonight.

It was cold today. This race leaves me feeling really frustrated. I didn't know they were giving medals to top 20 or else I would've pushed harder. I think I could've run with Cubby and Davis if I hadn't been boxed in for the first mile. I tried to get out faster but I ended up way back, about 2-3 minutes into the race I noticed a fat kid ahead of me and realised I needed to start moving. I kept elbowing, shoving, and pushing my way through the masses of slower runners to the top. I finally caught up to read and chase about 10-11 minutes in and I was feeling great. Unfortunately the leaders were able to put a lot of distance between me and them, I felt like I could catch them if we had another mile. I never slowed the process of catching people down, I felt great. I targeted this guy a couple hundred meters before it went onto the finish on the field, he was a good 100m ahead of me. I caught him with a hundred meters left and saw Coleman Lloyd but I was a couple feet short of catching him. Region will be a lot different, no way to get boxed in when there's only 42 people in the race. I've actually been having a little fun the last two races, first time ever in cross country. At region my goal is to finish in the top 4. I know I can beat max and Coleman, and I know I can beat Adam and Tayte. I want to be right with Cubby and Davis. I'm pissed I didn't get a medal when I was that close. Great news for the team, 2nd place to mountain view by 30 points in a meet with 34 teams (timpanogos ran its JV.). So really close. Didn't get any of my goals today, so that's another reason I'm a bit annoyed, but we got a trophy so that's awesome. Dang it, I put the wrong date. Oh well I will change it later. I saw Chris Rushing and Coach Cobler there, Chris took 3rd! The guys from East work really hard, so you know it's going to be exciting any time you get to see them race!