AM-2 mile shakeout.
PM-race. Went well, I’ll write more later. Clayton won, and McMillan was third. It was quite a spectacular day. 5 other qualifiers for day 2, and our decathlete did great.
Longer report: Boy is Austin HOT. We got to the track about 80 minutes before our race, relaxed for a bit, then warmed up about 45 minutes before we raced. I did the smallest warm up(less than 2 miles) to date due to the heat. Coach prepared us well for the heat, so we were staying cool until we were on the track. Did 4 strides, had a team prayer, and went to the start. Due to the weather, they had changed the schedule so that all other events were during the day, and we were at 9, so the stands were kinda empty; however there were probably 100 people in the stands cheering for BYU, which was sweet!
Gun went off, and I get on the rail right behind Connor Weaver. I didn't expect this race to go out too fast, and just tried to race similar to the Stanford Invite. While we were going considerably slower, it was tougher. I didn't think it was going to feel that hot, but by the fifth lap I started taking water. The first time I was in about 20th-22nd place, and I went outside to get water, but the person didn't hold it out, so I swung to lane 4 to grab in out of their hand. It was annoying, but we were going slow enough that it didn't jeopordize anything. As the race went on, I started grabbing water every lap, and sometimes twice a lap, and just throwing it on myself, and getting a sip every once in a while. I was feeling really dehydrated, but I had to tell myself that everyone else was feeling the same way. As the race played on, I just stuck on the back of the lead pack and waited for moves to be made. I remembered Rory mentioned how at regionals there would be a lot of times when people would look like they'd make moves and then nothing coming from them, and after noticing that here, I just waited in the back. At 5k I moved up and eventually I got behind Clayton. Spent most of the race on the inside, which was nice. With 4 laps to go, I was feeling fatigued, but then heard someone in the crowd yell that we had less than a mile to go, which changed my mindset, and I was ready for us to pick it up. It picked up with 2 laps to go, and then with a lap to go I was boxed in a bit and started watching Clayton lead the race and hope he would win it. After maybe 100m, I realized I'm still racing, and I don't know why I didn't try and catch Clayton, but I sped up just enough to hold off fifth. In the last 30 meters, I was catching McMillan, and I knew Hassan Abdi was closing hard, so I yell at McMillan to speed up. He didn't hear me, but he finished right ahead of me by less than a tenth of a second.
It was probably one of the coolest things to finish a race with 3 guys on our team doing so well. BYU's distance squad had a lot of bad races at nationals the past few years, which made this accomplishment feel even sweeter. 3ish mile cool down with Clayton.
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