I technically did this race last night, but I can't put two races in one day. I met up with Austin, Aaron, Mason, Kyrie, and Jacia at Austin's and we played air hockey and relaxed for about three hours before the race, so shoutout to Austin for that. We were all still hurting from time trials that morning, so it was a pretty painful race. I was having bad stomach cramps since time trials, so the run was painful. I didn't even realize the race started where it did, so I started about 10 seconds late at the very back. I pushed ahead and got away from the big pack of people, where a whole bunch of inexperienced runners were going ham. Rather than hurt myself by surging ahead I stuck at a high 5:30 pace and let the others die out trying to keep a lead. By 800m in there was only one runner ahead who was falling back, so I dropped the pace to gain the lead. By the first U turn about a mile in I saw there was another runner about 30 seconds behind me, and besides that the road was all but deserted. I saw Aaron, Austin, Mason, Kyrie, and Jacia coming back and they cheered for me, so I sped up again. At this point my chest was starting to hurt pretty bad. at 1.75 miles in the course turned on to a road with no lighting(we were supposed to wear glowsticks, but mine fell off. It was sketchy racing alone in the dark, but I liked it. When I was hitting the second U I saw the 2nd place runner was a little over a minute behind me, so I sped up even more, hoping my chest pains would fade away. They didn't, but I kept going quick. The XC squad cheered for me again as we passed each other. I finished pretty well. I won by over three minutes. Really glad I've been doing two runs a day, because it finally payed off. Shoutout to Kyrie for winning the girls division, and Jacia for getting 2nd! The three of us got out pictures taken and some sweet empty moonshine bottles for our victory. Feels good to finally win an XC race, my debut senior year 5k no less! Now I need to win an invitational and life will be perf.
5 miles that morning. Did the first three with the Varsity boys, then I ran a little extra to join Kyrie and Jacia after. Strides after that.
3 more with strides that afternoon
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