The best pace is a suicide pace

We do the warm up. Coach explains the event. My handicap is 18:15. We are told the course is 3 miles, and due to my PRless season, I intend to go ham, knowing it will be a flat course, hoping I can finally drop some time. Clayton starts, I begin five seconds after him.  It takes me almost half a mile to catch him. Sprinters. I later discovered we ran at 4:30 pace for a while at the beginning. I eventually pass Clayton, then Kenny. No one else offers any resistance. I keep moving up. I pass lots of people, I run fast. I get to the last 400, and there's a huge pack ahead of me. I kick hard. I pass lots of people. As I cross the line coach says, "33:03." Those of you who know math will note that 33:03-18:15=14:48. The watches tell us 2.85. 14:48. 2.85 miles. That's my time today. I found a race converter on the internet which informed me that I would have run a 15:37 if the race had been a full 3 miles. The goal is 15:30 for region. Based on current rankings, that puts me in 5th, right in front of Haden Penrod, who I 've been really close to beating this season, so it's not too unrealistic. It's only about a minute PR. I've done it before. I'll do it again, especially if it's the only one I get this year. Surely the training has done something, right?

Recovery run at 8:00 flat. Minimal core workout. Conversation with Coaches about region rankings. If our top five guys drop 4 positions each, then we will qualify for state. This shouldn't actually  be too difficult. I intend to drop ten or so positions myself. 

Easy speed workout. raced One 800 first, my first lap was 66. final time was 2:21. Clayton ran 2:07. Why he long jumps I'll never know. We next did 4x400 at pace with finish. 68, 72, 72, 68. Not too hard today, I kinda like tapering.

I did not play tag after we were told to do a 20 minute recovery run. No matter what anyone says, I did what I was told. After the run, we played one round of dodgeball, then did senior speeches.

Region VIII championship. They shoulda called it the chumpionship. This weekend did not go well. We needed to lose 20 points from the rankings to state qualify. We didn't. We finished basically exactly where we were ranked. 6/7. Yay. Small consolation is that I qualified individually, but state will just be really depressing without the other guys. S/O to Rylie for also making state. My personal mistake was going too fast the first mile. If I'd known I were going 5:10, things would've been different. I died hard at the end. I feel really bad for Clayton though. Came in 19th, one position off of a qualifying spot. Can't wait to train for state alone.

First distance run in a while. We did the dock's beach run. Six miles, going one direction it's slightly downhill the whole wawy, until you reach a massive uphill at the end. We rested for a few minutes at the top, then headed back, with a huge downhill at the beginning followed by 2.5 miles of long, but gradual hill. We held about a 7 flat pace, so decent run. I'll probably feel it tomorrow.

I took today a bit hard for a recovery day, but oh well. Hard work is good. I did the three mile run at 7 flat, not too fast for three miles, but faster than usual, especially where I was sore from yesterday's run. I worked pretty hard on the machines after the run, so I'd better have noticeably larger biceps tomorrow.

Note: my biceps were not noticeably larger this morning. I woke up at 4:00 this morning. I left the house at my favorite time (20 minutes after I woke up), and didn't get home until 7:15. I went to the prison in draper. I sat on a bus all day, and ate way too much lunch, which was way too close to practice. Also I went mountain biking after practice yesterday, so possibly not the smartest move. I went straight from the bus to the track when we got back into town, and the workout commenced shortly. 1x1600-5:05. Disapointing. 4x800. We paced these, so it's not a bad thing that I ran 2:40 on all of them. That was the target. Then I went to work for half an hour. Then I went home to do homework. Today just sucked.

Recovery day. 2 miles with the girls because Clayton bailed on me today. Did some good core after. 

I really wish I were better at speed. 6x400, then 4x200. The 400's were supposed to be at about mile pace, and I did decent, splits were 73, 72, 68, 69, 72, 73. Not super consistent, but all in the range of what my mile pace should be. The 200's were where I failed. We were supposed to accelerate slowly through the whole thing, hitting top speed right at the end, but there was a 180 degree turn a little more than halfway through the course we were using that drained all speed. My legs were pretty dead from the fours, so I never really reached top speed. Clayton seemed to enjoy himself tho.

Last official practice of 2016. Really easy day. 2x90,60,30. I think we covered close to 2 miles, but I didn't have GPS running. Got the legs moving, felt really great. State is wednesday, and we'll do a short shakeout run at the hotel tomorrow. The season is over. Time to catch up on my "life."

The last meet of the season. Honestly I'm kinda glad it's over. I have lots of homework to catch up on, and now I finally have time to do so. State was decent. I feel like my pace was pretty consistent, but I didn't get any mile splits, so who knows. The course was different than I remembered, so I didn't race it quite right. There were a few hills I forgot about, and having to run extra hills beat me mentally. In the end, I came out 67th, which is exactly the same place I took last year, but I did it 17 seconds faster. Still of PR's for this season, but at least I know that I ran this course faster than I did last year, which means I did improve at least a little. Next year WILL be better