C Mantz Running

      7 miles with Noah, Wolfgang Beck, and Kenan around the Princeton campus and inside.  It was freezing and really wet.  The sidewalks had atleast a half an inch of water, but there were also a lot of big puddles.

     Ran with Ethan and he was feeling a little sick, but we still averaged around a 6:30, then after 8 miles I hit the track and ran a 400m and 2X200m. I felt a little sluggish, but that was expected from the lack of quality sleep and the flights yesterday.

      4 miles with Ethan, 2 on grass, then an 800m on the track at goal race pace(so for an 8k, that isn't too quick), then 4 more miles. 

     4.7 miles easy and then some strides.  I didn't feel particularly good, but I have two days to get feeling better.

     I did 2 loops of the course with Johnny and then did some strides and a little part of a lap.  I felt really good and the course looked fast, so I'm pretty excited about tomorrow. 

Today went perfect for me. I did a shakeout at 7(I couldn`t sleep well so I decided to do the shakeout early.). I warmed up with Johnny Dressel and Thomas Pollard for a bit. I got to the start and started in box 7 near the end. I got a perfect start for how I wanted to race, found Cerake and just decided (at this moment) to stick on him because he, from what I heard, was having some great results(which he was) recently. It felt slow, but I just stuck in the front of the pack. After 2k Paul Roberts kicked the pace up a bit, but it was still quite relaxed and a big pack. At 4k(the race was in 2k loops) Cerake put a move in, so I thought the whole pack would run with him, so I just pushed to stay with him, but he was flying so I wasn`t able to catch up for a while. After a few hundred meters he had to walk and massage out his quad. Right after I caught up to him and we ran together for the next mile. I was so scared that the 6th place guy would pass me, so I tried to keep the pace strong. With about a kilometer to go Cerake fell off. I still thought he would outkick me, so I just kept trying to put some room between me and 6th place. The rest of the race was hard, but it felt great to be racing. There was a bunch of Utah guys cheering me on for a lot of the race and after(if you`re reading this, thanks!) and I saw Ben with his shirt off cheering me on at 600m to go, which was pretty funny. All the cheering helped motivate me. After I felt great, did a cool down, watched the pro races, then went and did processing/paperwork for worlds. Thanks everyone for the support all season long!