Wow what an adventure.. haha. So, I was up late last night and I was worried I'd sleep through my alarm so I set 3 different ones. I woke up to the first one and thought, wow I still have time to sleep I'll wait for the next one! Welp, I fell back asleep and slept right through the others. Then my coach called me like 20 minutes before the start and somehow I woke up to that even though my phone was on vibrate, I panicked and got ready as fast as I could then started driving. I'm still sort of figuring out the neighborhoods of Rexburg and the start was in one I'm not as familiar with, so I drove around trying to find the start (I was there on Wednesday so I thought how hard can it be to find it?) I ended up at a high school and tried calling my coach again for directions, I knew I was close but I'd taken the wrong road and I had like 10 minutes now before the race would start. She didn't answer, I decided to just park in the Albertsons parking lot and run the course until I got to the start, even though it was cutting it close. I got there with less than a minute to spare, though they started the race a couple minutes late so I was fine. But phew a .7 mile sprint in the freezing cold wasn't exactly what I had in mind for warmup haha :)
Anyways, I was kind of in a funk and I haven't raced in soooo long so I wasn't sure what pace to go out at, I decided to stay more relaxed rather than go out too fast and die after the first mile. I don't think I went out quite fast enough tbh, I wasn't really in race mode. I started out in front right off the bat. First mile was 6:41, I thought meh I guess that's decent and then relaxed far too much. Going on the dirt was rough because of the uneven ground, but it was softer than pavement so that felt kind of nice on the legs. Once I got to the neighborhood stretch a girl behind me caught up and said "let's go" so I was like okay imma try to stay with you. That worked for like a half mile, then I fell off. Tbh I held back because I didn't really wanna hurt. Then two more girls (all three were on the same team) passed me, I gave like a half-hearted effort. By then I think I gave up and just wanted to finish. Then in the last quarter mile one more girl from a separate team passed me. I came across in 21:56, 7:03 average.
I was a bit embarrassed because of how slow my time was, but I wasn't surprised by it. I didn't really race, the last 2 miles I was basically just running it. I didn't really try that hard and I'm kind of mad at myself for it. I need to practice pumping myself up and getting excited about races, then giving it my all. And most importantly mental toughness/positive thinking. As I thought about it though, at least it wasn't the slowest race I've ever run. Haha. I can be happy with that ;) putting it in perspective though, I ran faster at practice on Wednesday... so I know I can do better if I actually go all in. Next time :)
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