How I became the best

6 miles in the heat. We should have only gone 6, it was too hot.

Pretty good race today! Warmed up on the course with the whole team, and then cheered on the girls while we jogged around some more. Stretched and did some drills. I got in 5 strides before the start. When we started the kid in the alley next to me like pushed right into me which made me push Heston and he got a terrible start. Right after that though I got out in front and I lead until 400 meters. Heston passed me at 600 and I hung on to him for a minute. I was feeling good, and I really wanted to be Heston! So, I took the lead and opened up a gap pretty quickly. I never looked back, but I'm pretty sure they were far behind me. I just kept pushing and pushing and there was just nobody around me. When we crossed cement I could hear spikes 5 to 10 seconds back. I put in a few surges to make sure nobody caught me. Passed the mile in 5:14, about where I wanted to be. Then at about 2 miles I could tell Heston was catching me, and I through in another surge to get away. About 30 seconds after that he blazed past me, using a downhill and pretty much sprinting. I stuck with him, and kind of nudged him to get the inside of a corner. He passed me back 50 meters after that and used an surged up a short hill. I let him go a little bit, but made it up fairly quickly. By this time we were on our second loop. I stuck right behind him for a while, then with about 800 to go there was another short uphill. He surged up that and my legs locked up and I couldn't follow. I never looked back to see if anyone was behind me, but I just pretended someone was there to motivate me to keep it up. When we got on the track I put in a half hearted kick, but overall this was a good experience. I've never been the frontrunner in a race, it flet amazing! I was so in control! I'm actually kind of suprised Heston caught me. He's a great runner, but he's only been doing 30 miles a week this summer, and he's more of an 800 runner. I thought I would get him if I pushed from the start, but oh well, we still have the whole season to battle it out. Nate was 45 seconds back, and I felt pretty good about that because I had done all the work to get us that much ahead of the pack! Nate also beat all the Salem kids in a sprint finish, so we got first, second, and third! Our next guys were 9 and 14, this was our first time beating Salem, and they are really our only competition in our region. Super excited for this season! Cooled down a mile and rolled out.

Post race workout: 2 miles @ 6 minute pace. Warmed up a mile and did the workout on a treadmill. Felt super easy, but I didn't want to push it. .5 mile cool down.

Another tough day today. Warmed up to Park Elementary (1 mile) and did mile repeats on the hills. Course was up the hill about 300 meters to Diamond Fork, then down the hill next to it, up a shorter and less steep hill through neighboorhoods, back down, up the hill by Diamond Fork, and back down to where we started. This was one of the hardest ones we did last year, and it was pretty tough today. He wanted us faster each time, so the first one was slow. I led for the first 3 repeats. On the last one, Heston took the lead at the top of the first hill, and the down hill was really fast. The next uphill was faster than we did it on the other ones, and thats when I really started to struggle. The downhill was super tough too. We turned the corner and I was too far outside so he got ahead and I started to fade. I kicked it in again to catch up, and I actually did. But after a few seconds my legs locked up and I faded really bad. By the top of the hill he was 10 seconds ahead, and he got even more on me on the downhill. Splits were 6:29-6:09-6:04-5:39, Heston's last one was 5:25. 1 mile cool down. 

Warmed up 2.75 miles at 8:30 pace, then coach had us do a 1000 at mile pace, but it ended up being quite a bit slower. 3:06 for me, probably 3:05 or so for Heston, 4:55 mile pace. My legs were really sore from 2 hard days and I'm ready for a lot of recovery! Cooled down 1.7 miles. Grass relays on saturday.

Easy miles and some ultimate frisbee.

Got to AF at 7:10 and ran part of the course. Then I waited in the port-a-potty line for 45 minutes, not even joking. Cheered on some people for a while and asked someone to homecoming #slayin Layed down for a while, and warmed up again with the Varsity team. Our top 4 ran and our number 8 had to run. This day felt soooo long, I should have just driven up at like 10. Heston was first, I was second, Nate was third, then Fletcher and Tanner. Heston started and was about 5:10 at the mile, came through the second time at high 5:1X. We were in 9th at that point. I quickly caught the kid ahead of me and another kid caught up to us. I moved past them and started catching another guy ahead of us. Btw those hay bails are freaking annoying. I caught that other kid ahead of me and the one guy that came up to me the first time kept getting in front of me then slowing down, so I just stayed behind him. My coach told me to move up and not let him slow me down, so I swung wide and surged hard. I wasn't feeling that bad, I think I could have gone faster if I had had fast guys to run with, I need to work on running hard by myself. The whole second lap I was trying to catch this guy that was like 50 meters ahead or so, but I never got him. I got a really big gap on the guys behind me, so I was really happy about that. Finished strong with 5:28. Thats a good course, but seriously those hay bails... When I finished we were up in fourth. I think I could have run much faster if I had taken this race seriously and had some good runners to go with. Its really hard for me to push it when I'm by myself. Cheered the rest of my team on for half an hour then cooled down half a mile. Rolled out.

8.2 miles at 4 o'clock. Felt alright until the last few, they were tough. 3 surges in the middle. One on the golf course hill, one on the hill by the canyon, and a 1:30 surge through the grass hopper fields. There were so many bugs today, on every step like 5 grass hoppers would freak out and try to get me.