(Sorry for the long entry, I know it's not state, but I got carried away)
Well I PR'd by 9 seconds which is good, but I also killed myself doing it. That race hurt way more than last week's race. The course was also .04 longer, (although it was on the same sight), so I would have been under 18:10 probably. I bet I could have done better if I had gotten more sleep, too or done something different during the day. Anynways, here's the break down.
Our second and third runner weren't racing, so I was #3, but at least I got to start in the front. The course was on the same site (our home course), but it was changed just a little bit, and instead of just Ogden being there there was around 20 other schools. So a much different scenerio from our first meet, except for the course. I just realized that our course lacks a big component to XC: hills. So you kind of use a track mentality on it. I hope we will be prepared for Bob Firmin and State.
Mile 1- 5:40
When the gun went off, I sprinted out pretty hard, and so did everyone else. I geuss that's how all varsity races are, I'll just have to get used to that. Damon got out in front of me and Davis with some runners in between us. I reminded him not to go out too hard since we talked about that earlier before the race. We eventually got into a pack of three and Davis headed it. I knew we we were going pretty quick from the start, and that was confirmed when Coach (Todd) told us we were at a 5:40 mile.
Mile 2- 6:18 (That's the average for my next 2 miles which was 12:36, last mile longer. Mile 1 is the only split I heard)
This was when I felt like slowing down, and obviously I, but I almost let Damon and Davis drop me. Luckily they noticed this and and let me know. I hit the wall somewhere is this mile, and and a hard wall it was. I spent the rest of the race battling it.
Mile 3- probably between 6:00 and 6:10 with the .09 taken off
The fire in my legs just worsened and worsened due to the lactic acid filling them up, and my face showed it. I think I had Davis with me for most of this mile, but Damon dropped back about 20-30 meters. It got so bad with 800 to go. Like I said this race hurt way more than last week. It probably made it worse when somone said there was 400 meters left when I knew it wasn't true, but I wished it was. I remember looking at my watch when it was at 15 and thinking "the leader (Conner) has already finished, I really wish I was done". Some encouagement from teammates helped me keep going when I hit the quarter-to-go mark. At this point I was just telling myself, "I will finish soon, and it's gonna feel good when that happens", and then I was in sight of the bend that led to the last straightaway, and the white tents that we had decided we going to start our kick at.
Last stretch: 10-20 seconds
This is where the mental burden laid off and I kicked it into high gear, which brought on so much pain. I looked over and saw a Bear River runner, and I went faster and beat him by a hair. That felt pretty good since I was in his exact postion last week. The line to give them our Bib#'s was pretty long and I wanted to collapse or at least lean on something, and I was gasping for air. It took me about 5 minutes to catch my breath.
All in all, I was pretty satisfied. My teamate did pretty good. Mark and JD (our seniors) finished right with eachother in 17:12 and 17:14, and four of my other teamates (Damon, Xavier, Davis, and Keith in both varsity and JV) proved to be in a good pack with me (we all finished within 16 seconds of eachother) And I realized that even though we still have a whole XC and track season ahead of us, next year if we all improve together we are going to be a dang good top 5 group. Our team took 19'th, but we beat Box Elder and Roy without some of our fastest runners. Now we just need to really race Bonneville hard next week to see if we can beat them with our complete varsity, and if we can do that, we can qualify for state at region in October.
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