Good race, not great. I prepared near perfectly as far as running, eating, and workouts this week, but not mentally. I just wasn’t ready to race, but it was only a few seconds slower than the goal time. I’ll write more tomorrow about it.
Shakeout in the morning. Felt good. It was a little harder to stay busy and not overthink the race when you don't have classes to think of the whole day. Went and watched the mile around 1. It was a bit sad to see that most of the guys I have been training with just races that didn't reflect their fitness. This made me doubt my training and fitness because these were the same guys I trained with. This was a big mistake, and I think this was a problem for me. After I warmed up, got my spikes, and prepared. I was running in uniform, so I was super excited about that. Well, I lost track of time and didn't get as many strides in as I wanted. After that things went pretty much perfect. The gun went off and Clayson was to the right of me, and things were just nice. I got right behind Chase who was pacing us. We went out kinda fast, but then slowed down. At 1200m our splits were 64, 66, 68. Clayson realized the pace was slowing and passed me and well, him and Chase just kept going. I think my mental state wasn't there as much as it needed it to be. I was about 4:27 at the mile. They had got about a half second on me. Probably 4 meters. After that every lap Clayson just got another half a second ahead of me. The race just happened so fast. I should've stuck it harder, but just didn't want focused. The pacing was great for me, and if I would've just stuck with Clayson(he was going the exact pace I wanted to go) I would've been right where I had make a goal to be. With 200m to go I made a move and got fairly close to Clayson (one second behind him), and then with 100m left I just stopped focusing in the moment. I think if I would've pushed that last 100m, I could've been 8:16.
Overall, this race was a good learning experience. I learned that I prepared great, and that everything seemed to be in my favor today. I just wasn't focused, as well as I doubted myself when I shoud'nt have. I plan on focusing more in the next race. I'm pleased to run a new PR as well. I'm happy for Clayson, as he ran a great race. He didn't have anyone pushing him for the last 1000 meters, and I bet if I would've been close to him he could've ran faster. Fun race though.
4 mile cool down with Clayson, Noah Jacobs, and Michael after. Another cool takeaway is that I did more mileage this week than any week in high school and still ran a PR.
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