Today was the GNAC XC championships hosted by Western Oregon University. The morning was perfect for running (overcast, scattered showers, ~50 degrees, little wind), and the course held up pretty well despite getting rained on all night. Only a couple of places were muddy. However, I was correct that the course was long, so I have no faith in any of my mile splits or in the final time. We were told by WOU that it was 20-30 seconds slow for the men, which means to me they don't know exactly how long it is. Anyway, so I wanted to try starting a little more aggressively today. I don't do that very often, but I figured the field would separate pretty early into a distinct lead pack, and I didn't want to get caught in no-man's land. So I keyed off Chip and Dak and tucked into a lead pack of about 20 guys and coasted through the first 1k in 3:00 and first mile in 4:53. Quick start. I hung on pretty well through 2 in 9:55ish, though I'm not sure the exact split. From there, the lead group split into about 10 guys with me and a teammate in around 15th. My teammate really stepped up his game today, as he's never been close to me in races before, and today he beat me. It makes our team sooo much stronger. My coach had me down at 3 miles in 15:04 and 4 in 20:16, and I had heard the 4k split at 12:25. Again, I have no idea if any of these are accurate, but it feels about right. Kyle and I continued to work together, which was really helpful as I slipped a bit mentally in those middle miles. I stuck by his side and we pulled up into 10th and 11th. As we came around the final loop, I saw 2 runners a long ways up. I did not feel like pushing the pace, but I found another gear anyway and worked on closing the gap. Kyle was clearly hurting, but he went with me anyway. He's one of the toughest runners I've ever seen. We rounded the final turn that took us down the last straightaway (800m long!!!) and I worked on picking up the pace like I've been doing in practice. The NNU runner ahead of me had pulled ahead, but Kangogo, one of the Alaska Anchorage guys, was still coming back. I started trying to figure out the best strategy to beat him. I believe he's a 3:45 1500m runner, and I've found it impossible in previous races to outsprint him. Since I wasn't able to catch him with 400m to go, I thought my best chance would be to sneak up on him and try to blow past him at the line. I was really hurting by this point and didn't think I could maintain a 400m sprint. At this point, Kyle put in a big surge and went by me, and I folded a bit mentally. I watched for a second as he pulled up on Kangogo, and as expected, Kangogo ran just hard enough to stay ahead of him. Feeling completely exhausted and unwilling to put myself through more pain to try to outsprint my teammate, I coasted in to the finish, as no one else was nearby. He put 6 seconds on me over the final 400m. Overall, it was a really well run race. Not sprinting all the way to the finish leaves a bad taste in my mouth.... I don't like knowing that I didn't give it everything. But at the same time, I think I was right in feeling that it was pointless. Also, I feel that I'm still not running as well as I should be able to. I'm going to cut my miles a bit more heading into Regionals to see how I feel. Maybe 80 next week and 70 the week after. I did not feel as strong in the second half of the race as I think I should.
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