Ethan Cannon

Well, that's it. A wrap on my career at BYU. Feels bad because people were there watching the race like Isaac, my coach who helped me get on the team, and then of course Clayson and Michael who paced me. We went out on pace for 30:00 which is 29:10 at sea level and would probably get me a spot at regionals (havent checked yet but it actually might be closer to 29:05 or 29:00 now). Michael did the first mile slow in 4:50 for me and of course it felt good. Then Clayson got us back on track and that didn't feel great. Michael led the third mile but by this point even a normal paced mile hurt. Came through 5K in 14:59 or so, but that was I think my last on pace split. After a 73 and 74 or so, it got bad- very consistently a little worse at a time, bottoming out in 79 before I picked it up the last couple laps. We had dropped Zack, but he was apparently being smart, not dead, and made up ground and passed me, ending up 9 seconds ahead. Afterwards I laid and then sat on the turf for like 30 minutes. The last 10 minutes of these 10K races I've done have hurt so so bad. It also hurts to run them despite knowing your dreams are slipping away lap after lap. Was it the early morning races that I simply couldn't handle well? Or coming back to altitude after being at sea level? Hard to say. In either case, it's a serious confidence check heading into my time at Minnesota. I'm so grateful I have at least one more year. My final races at both South Medford and BYU have been extremely dissatisfying. I have loved being a BYU athlete. It was something I dreamed about since I was a freshman in high school. I'm so proud of my story thus far and looking forward to writing the next chapter, hopefully being all American and taking the gophers back to XC nats. I feel very blessed. Disappointment is part of life. It was a hard day as I also lost my summer job for a very frustrating reason. At night was the viewing for my grandma. I'm just now sitting down to try and process everything and my thoughts are still in a mess. Time for a break, then time to up the mileage and get ready to go. It's not my time to quit yet!