The Mongoose

3 easy in the morning to Hidden Valley.

6.5 easy in the afternoon to Jake Powell's house and back. It sprinkled on us a little bit at the start and the cloud cover was nice. I felt good. 8x100m strides on the turf afterwards then team night.

3 easy in the morning to the bridge. The guys were pretty antsy and I could tell that they were excited to race.

After school we drove up to Cedar for the first race of the season. 2 mile warm up and I felt good. It wasn't too hot because we had some nice cloud cover. Then we headed over to the starting line and did some strides. The start was weird. Coach Corry from Cedar was telling us where the course went and stuff, then he just said "Bryan will start the race." I was still talking to Josh and waiting for a start command when the gun went off, so that kind of sucked and pretty much our whole team got a bad start. The plan for the race was to run as a pack and push the last mile. We stayed relaxed for the first mile and a half and didn't worry about wasting energy trying to get to the front too soon which was good. We raced our plan almost to perfection and finished with a solid group of guys up front. 6 guys in the top 10 and 8 in the top 12. Great work from the team today for the first race of the season. #CREWbulonimbus 5x:30 repeats afterwards and cool down to finish off the day.

3 easy in the morning to the Spectrum. 

Workout in the afteroon at the region course. 4x1 mile repeats w/ 3-4 minute recovery. It was nice and cool and cloudy this morning but somehow it all disappeared by the time we did our workout. So it was hot and muggy but we were still able to put in a great workout. The team is really strong this year and I think we will do big things.

3 easy in the morning to Hidden Valley.

8.5 on the trails behind the school in the afternoon. Felt pretty crappy for the last half. Just not enough water during school or something. 

3 easy in the morning to the bridge.

In the afternoon we did a sort of relay/meet thing with Pine View on the region course. There were teams of 3 and each person ran one leg of the course. The first leg was 1.04 miles, the second was 1.05, and third was .85. I was on a team with Josh and Spencer and I ran the first leg. I took the lead from the start because I knew that there are some tight spots on the course and I didn't want to get stuck behind anybody with the race being a short distance for an xc race, and also because I didn't want to just rely on my kick and take the chance of someone out-kicking me. I felt good during my leg, and probably a little too good after I finished. I just couldn't channel my mile speed from track and make my legs hurt. I was 4:55 at the mile and 5:15 for the 1.04 (although my watch said 1.09) and handed off to Josh in first. He increased the lead and so did Spencer and we finished first and got the sweet prize, a framed picture of a stitched teddy bear and 3 bowling pins we all signed our names and times on so that was cool. After that we did 3x5:00 hard w/3:00 recovery and a short cool down. 

About 11.5 miles up around Navajo Lake with some of the guys. It was nice to get into the cooler temps up there, and it was actually a little chilly when we started. Felt good, nice way to wrap up the week.