Blake Bennions running

4 miles and the 4 200m strides. I did them at a nice pace.

Premeet for state. I know what I can do and what I should be satisfied with. I'm going to try to do a little better than that, because I need to improve and you can't improve unless you run faster than you have before and beat people you haven't before. I can do well tomorrow, I need to concentrate and get motivated and then go out there and ran a great race. People are all going to do different things tomorrow, I'm just going to do my best. I want to know what my best is. 10 ounces of beat juice. According to the study I just read the best time to take best juice is 4 hours before the race. So I will take it again about the same time we are leaving Alta.

I had a good race. I started out perfectly and then we got called back to the start, so when the real race started I got out well but not as good and wasn't feeling quite as strong but I wasn't going to let that affect me. So I ran a decent first mile, my watch started a few seconds fast, I kind of false started when they blew the whistle haha, but I ran back in time for the gun to go off. I heard 5:22 about where the mile mark was so I knew I was where I wanted to be. The rest of the race I battled and faught my way up. I was running with an American fork guy and a Davis guy heading around the lake the 2nd time and I wanted to beat them but was getting tired and hurting. I motivated myself and looked forward and accelerated ahead of them after the lake a little before the track. I passed Davis at the 150 mark on the track and passed some more guys on the final straight but then as I was about to finish someone pushed me and I didn't get past the last guy I guess according to the results. Overall I feel good about my effort this race, I think if I had run the perfect race, cut off all the distance I could have and passed people exactly when I should have, maybe I could have run 16:15 so 16:18 is really good, I feel like I gave all I had today. Hopefully I can run sub 16:00 at Nike southwest on a flat golf course at lower elevation! I'm happy with my effort, so I'm not unhappy with my place or time because I know that's what I could do. Hopefully this time will help my recruiting process.

16:18. Even though I didn't achieve my season goal, I feel like I had a strong senior cross country season and I improved a lot. I ran over 40 seconds faster in almost every race than I did last year. The thing I love most about high school is coming up, the mile, so I'm really excited to get out on the track and race. Also I still have one more important cross country race where I can break 16:00. I want to beat a lot of Davis guys at Nike, I want to beat their number 3 guy.

Another positive thought, its always good to know you would be varsity on any squad in the nation, and that is what you know when you beat someone on the best squad in the nation. I beat American Forks number 7 guy at state so that means I would be varsity on any team, it feels good, and it gives me confidence about our team. I want to beat more American Fork guys at Nike too. I think our whole team has adjusted our mindset and we are shooting high at Nike. I feel like everyone is motivated and we have a shot at doing some great things there.

I ran to the hotel I stayed at the entire summer before my sophomore year (convieniently a mile and a half from my house) and even during it for a month or so. I ran up beyond it to where I used to run at night, it has some great views. I really didn't know how to train back then. It's amazing how much stuff you remember that you completely forget when you revisit places, I used to do a full set of warm-up drills and stretches before every long run after I warmed up. I've been getting really lazy with core and stretching, I still do them a few times a week but it used to be a lot more intense and I would never miss a day, core used to be my most important part of the day before I started running, 100 push ups and 100 sit ups minimum. And I used to repeat a lot of numbers 7 or 8 times, I can't remember why haha. So I probably did more like 150 of them per night in 6-9th grades. I was still working up to it in 6th grade. And in 10th grade Murphy convinced me having a bulky and bigger upper body was just going to make me a slower runner so I stopped doing push ups as much and completely stopped benchimg, I probably run 30 seconds faster in 5ks because of it! But I should be doing more core, I would be a stronger better runner if I did a really good core wrkout, mostly sit ups and bicycle kicks, every night. I'm really happy I started running.