I can do it. I will do it NINE times!

A surprisingly good Monday workout! We ran to the Lundstrom park and did one 2k, two 1k's and three 600's. The grass was pretty soggy, but at least the snow had melted! The knee only bugged a little, no nasty stomach issues, and no cough. Good stuff. I just realized I left my mittens there... hopefully I can recover them later. I'm excited for the meet this weekend, (my first ever 6k race) 'cause it guarantees a PR, yay! (GT 398.2) (DD spike 87.6)

The road was boring. Ran an hour around town. I'm proud of myself - it was 52 degrees outside and I wore only a t-shirt and shorts - and I didn't freeze! Legs felt kinda crappy. 7:49/mi avg. (GT 405.9)

Easy canyon canal loop this morning (with the Old Main Stairs - ouch). The wind was chilly, but the rest of the run went really well. No GPS, just went by feel. 36:30 total time.

At practice, we did 2.75 out at 8:00/mi pace, then 2.5 back at 6:20/mi pace, and a .25 mini-cooldown - all on the time-trail course. The tempo section felt really relaxed and fast, lots of fun! Then abs and ice and all that joyous stuff. (GT 416)

Easy 45 minutes from the dorm by myself. Chillin'. (GT 421.5)

Ran around on the race course in Terre Haute. It's so cool, the course there is only for cross country! Not a marked-off golf course or park, a place where the sole purpose of all the grass and trees is to be part of a varied-length (4k, 5k, 6k, 8k or 10k) cross country race course. So awesome! Anyway, the run was ok, just way stiff from all the travel. Knee was kinda sucky, too. But I'm way excited for the race tomorrow! Goals: 22:15 or faster, top 5 on the team, top half in the race. Here goes nothing! (GT 427.3)

Got to the race a bit later than we'd planned, so we had a short (15 minute) warmup and a slightly stressful time getting race ready and checked in on time. But we made it!  The first 2k of the race went by really quickly, 7:00 or something similarly fast. Probably was a bit too quick. My next 2k I was a bit weak mentally, just didn't focus as well as I should've and let myself settle a bit too much. The last 2k went reasonably well, though, especially the last 1k . I came across the 5k mark in the 18:40's (that middle 2k really messed up my time, shucks) and started picking off people. As we came down the final stretch up to the finish, I think I passed 20 or more people, plus got to hurdle a couple of girls who went down. Crazy stuff!

So, the overview: overall, it was a solid race. Goal-wise, I was 34 places behind halfway and 17 seconds off my goal time, but I did stay top 5 and ran pretty well. I wasn't totally dead at the end, so I know I could've pushed harder, and I'm really going to work on that middle section. Next race is Conference (in 2 weeks) and I'm ready to start peaking! (GT 431.8) (DD spike 91.3)