After breakfast 15 min shakeout run. I stayed with Charlie for the easy part, and then passed him, Will, and Max, along with some others, sticking with a kid named Liam. Strides and core afterward.
At lunch I ate too heavily. After lunch we were literally forced to go into our rooms for an hour and sleep. People caught awake would have to do push ups and crunches. Pretty terrifying. And that we did Cloud Loop run. It's a five mile course, with 1184 foot elevation gain and 600 ft loss. At 13000 ft elevation. On a tiny trail that bikers occupy. We were put into groups of about ten based on speed, I think I was in the second fastest, or maybe third, along with Charlie, Max, Will, and another few kids, notably Ernest and Hugo. For the first mile Max, Hugo, and Ernest made a wall, making passing impossible, going a 7:11 for our first mile. After that the trail got smaller, so I made a move in front of Hugo and drafted off Max until the second mile, he drafting off Ernest. Once we started hitting the big 1100 foot hill the pace slowed, but about mid way I passed Max and followed Ernest, Charlie not too far behind, or Max or Will. I planned to trail off Ernest and surge the last 200, but after the hill the trail only had room for one person, and I was trailing about four feet behind him(the rest of the pack was quite a bit behind. Ernest and I were bombing the hills). He told me to just hurry and pass him, but I didn't want to. A About a minute later he got impatient and worried we'd trip and fall off the mountain face the trail followed, so he hopped into the surrounding grass, forcing me to pass him. After that I started mobbing the hills, passing about half of the group in front of me. I passed the Junior USA XC coach, coach Sanderson, towards the end but he didn't see me. I finished the 5 mile run in 31:57. Charlie ran a 32:48, and Ernest ran a 32:50. Max ran a high 32, and Will had to stop and go on the mountain top. Strides afterwards. Apparently coach Sanderson did notice me, because as Charlie and I did our strides we passed the coach, he looked at me and said "very good form, good pace," ect. I didn't hear him say that to anyone else. After that stride he pulled me away from the rest of my team and talked to me about my trail run, along with my PR's and goals for this season. Yee yee!
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