Running is a means and never merely an end

6AM- 6 mile progression run: 1 mile warm up, 4 miles, cutting it down 15 seconds a mile ending at threshold pace, then mile cool down. Mile splits for the 4 miles were 7:58/7:49/7:23/7:19. So we didn't quite end up fast enough, but that's okay. It felt good, comfotably hard, and my legs needed something like this. I'm so sore from weights Monday!

5:30PM- weights and core.

Warmed up a little to the lower fields, then jumped into some mile repeats on grass. We did 4. My pace was supposed to be 6:45, but with it being 88 degrees, no shade, and a race in 2 days, coach wasn't very worried about our times honestly. Splits ended up being 6:42/6:52/6:55/7:00. I don't like getting progressively slower. Anya, Breck, and Haley had a rough workout and all kinda dropped out halfway through the 2nd one, leaving me no one to run with. 3x100m sprints and a cool down mostly by myself afterwards.

Ice bath later. 

Went over to Milliken Park and ran tomorrow's course before classes this morning. Strides afterwards. I am actually feeling so good about tomorrow! I'm super excited for my parents to come watch me race (parents weekend!), and I'm excited about running on the course we've practiced on so much. I did a lot of envisioning myself during the race on the run this morning, and it was all good vibes. I know the first mile is going to be super fast, it is mostly downhill. That's a little intimidating because I am not big on "getting out." But I think I would liike to try something new tomorrow and not be so consumed with having an awesome kick so much and just...get out. Who knows. Better to test these things now, prior to conference!

Good race!! Not all of our team raced today, we were missing like 2 of our top 5 and then some others. With that being said, of those who did race, I finished first on our team today! That was a amazing feeling, even though I knew that Anya was not feeling up to par and ran a minute slower than usual, and that 2 others were missing...it still felt really nice to come through that line first. Time-wise, I was about the same (3 seconds slower) than last weekend, which was on a much flatter course and faster surface. I feel like I ran faster today though, and more consistently. I didn't feel like there was a time when I consciously decided to back it off a little bit like in a lot of races, although I know that will happen somewhat naturally. 

Anyways, so the race started super fast for the first half mile or so basically downhill, as expected. I lost my teammates for a minute there but then I found them and we packed up again. We came through together at the mile around 6:10, then sort of ended up switching off back and forth taking the lead and trying to pull away. At the 2 mile we all came through within a few seconds of eachother still, me being like 12:55 I think. Or was it :45? Not sure. Then I pulled ahead a little and we all stretched out over the last mile. Right before the finish there is this big hill, 2-300 meters I'd say, coming out straight into the chute. I tried my best to kick up that hill and I passed a few girls, then got 1 or 2 more in the chute. When I got close and saw my time on the race clock, I was a little disappointed because I thought I was going a lot faster than that, like maybe just over 20 or even high 19's. All of the upperclassmen told me it is a decieving course but I didn't really know what that meant at the time. That helped my kick though because I didn't want any more seconds to go by than what already had. Mell finished right behind me, which I was really proud of her for, because she has been injured for like 2 years and this is only her 2nd race back! She killed it.

Overall I am happy with my efforts but still disappointed that I am not yet back into the 19's. I still think I need to work more on the little things like my diet, stretching habitually after practice, and also my sleeping habits, especially on the weekends when I am not really being kept up by anything neccessary like schoolwork. I feel like those things could go a long way.

Easy peasy long trail run (mostly) on the trails behind Milliken Park today, and it felt fantastic. It was perfect running weather and I just felt like I could go on for another half an hour. Coach Harris (new assistant coach) ran with us for a little while. 

Off day mileage-wise. Weights and band stretching in the evening.

Warmed up to the lower fields. My left inner thigh or groin or whatever has been killing me for the past day or 2. It took about the whole warm up to loosen up at all...I don't know what I did. The workout was 8x800m at goal race pace, so for the top group we had 3:09-3:10. Got 60sec active rest between reps. These felt pretty good, you know "good" as far as intervals go anyways. I sort of had to ease into pace though because of my groin muscle. I definitely felt better than I did on those mile repeats the other day! My splits were consistent and on. 3:09/3:10/3:06/3:10/3:09/3:10/3:11/3:06 if I remember correctly, not 100% positive about 1 or 2 of those. In any event, I was no more than a second over and 3 seconds under assigned pace, so that was good! 

3x100m sprint afterwards, then cooled down back to the locker room for abs and stretching. Hopefully I'll be able to get in to see the trainer about my pains when we have our ice bath later.

Recovery run throughout Spartanburg with Anya and Haley. Weight lifting and core afterwards.

Went to Milliken park during lunchtime between classes with the team. 2 mile warm up, then we went into a fartlek. It was 3/1/4/1/5/1 minute surges with 2 minutes easy between each. 25 minutes total, which ended up being 3.4 miles. The 1's were supposed to be at 2 mile pace, 3min at 5k, 4min at 8k, and 5min at 10k. Buuuut....that's definitely not what happened. Ended up more like 800m pace, mile pace, 2 mile pace, and 5k pace, respectively. But that's alright because we don't have a meet this weekend, so we didn't have to worry about pushing too hard and being worn out. We were just ready to work. Cool down afterwards.

Core session and ice bath later!

Easy 4 with the girls & Coach Harris's girlfriend. We never do this little mileage unless its pre-meet...that makes me nervous about practice tomorrow.

Pissed about this workout. It was such a load of crap. Its kind of a long story and I don't really want to get into it again, but basically we were supposed to have 2 mile warm up, 8k tempo, 2-3 mile cool down. But through a series of annoying events, we ended up having to stop halfway through the tempo, and then took a break, then did a 6k at tempo pace again. So it was like 2 sets of short tempos, not long enough to get any endurance in, but not short enough to get any speed in. It was so pointless and it just hurt really badly for some reason, but I didn't even feel like it was a beneficial type of hurt. Just sucked.

Decided to change it up and run on the treadmills today! Not sure why, but it wasn't too bad. 5 recovery miles. I had to stop halfway through to go to the bathroom though. About 7:55 avg pace. Core and stretching afterwards.

Warmed up to the lower fields for our workout today. The boys soccer team was out there practicing and I honestly think that helped us hit good splits hahaha. Anyways, the workout was 1000/1000/800/800/600/600/400/400/1000m. The first of each distance was race pace or slightly slower, and then the second was "fast," on effort. We got 3 minutes in between so that was long enough to where the "fast" was definitely fast and we could make it hurt. The random thousand at the end was a surprise actually - after we all but sprinted that last 400, Coach Harris threw in an extra thousand for the sake of mental toughness just to see what we could do. I ended up running 3 seconds faster than that first thousand (the one at race pace), so that was alright considering we went all out for that last 400. I feel good about this workout. 2 mile cool down and abs after that.

7 miles at about a 7:50 avg pace to rail trail and back with Breck, Anya, and Chandler. 6x10sec hill sprints and abs afterwards. Felt surprisingly good today! I thought I would be kind of sore but I felt fine. Hopefully I'll be good and recovered before our 6am tomorrow.

Did a reduced tempo run today - 20 minutes at 30sec faster than race pace, which should have been like 6:50ish for me but it ended up being more like 7:05-7:10 for some reason. 5x30sec sprints, then 20 minute easy cool down and abs.

Ran an easy 5k + a few strides, pre-race. We leave at 11 tomorrow to race in my hometown!!! Then its fall break for me!

Not sure about my time, I know it was somewhere between 21:20 & 21:40. But more importantly, all I know is it sucked. Worst time of the season, and by far the worst race of the season mentally (and obviously physically). My legs, namely my calves, were absolutely killing me. They were so tight and wound up, I felt like they were about to snap with every step. I'm not sure why...maybe they're just tired because we had a really hard 2 weeks of workouts. We haven't tapered for a race all season, just working on peaking for conference. I will say this makes me excited for conference - to see what I can do given adequate rest and a solid taper. Theres no way I could feel worse than during this race, thats for sure. 

Workout was a 10 mile long run "with a fast finish." Took the first half easy, maybe 8-8:30 pace, then gradually sped up into a 7:15 last 2 miles. Those last 2 miles kind of hurt honestly. The rest felt nice though, and I felt good about it afterwards!

5 mile out and back through Spartanburg at a 7:35 avg pace. Felt good for the most part! Weights afterwards.

2 miles warm up, then a workout of 3k, 2k, 1k. 3k & 2k were just over race pace, at target 4:16-19 pace. Ended up being 4:06-12 per K, so more like at race pace. The 1k was faster, at 3:55. We did these at Milliken park, which was really nice as a change of scenery if nothing else because we always do our interval workouts around the practice football fields. Coach Harris said this will be our last effort this hard before conference. Ahhh! We will probably only have like 2 more workouts, both slightly easier than today.

Cooled down afterwards, but too quickly I'll admit because it was like 12:30 and I had a test in my 1 o clock class to get to. So I got back to our car and jumped in and went immediately to class afterwards, which sucked because once I left class I realized I was sooo stiff since I really didn't cool down properly and had to just sit down all the sudden for an hour and a half. Ice bath after class.

4 miles of negative splits today! We started at like 8:05 and ended up around 6:35 for the last mile, averaging out a 7:21 I believe. I felt fantastic today!! I hope I'll feel this good at conference - I just felt like no matter how much we picked it up it didn't phase me. Nice to have some low mileage today.

Weights afterwards.

6 mile recovery run, 8:05 pace. Everyone stayed together today, which was awesome. I love my team! Came back to the lockerroom after that and did some abs before leaving for class.

Warmed up to the lower fields & had a moderate workout day. We did 2 miles worth of alternating 200's. The fast 200's were 38-40 seconds, and then the slow ones inbetween were a steady jog, maybe 50-52. So we did a mile of that and finished at 6:18, then 3 minutes rest, and then another mile finishing at 6:16 I think. 5x30sec sprints afterwrards, which was suprisingly difficult. I just don't have much footspeed so in conjunction with the 200's, my legs were pretty tired. 2 mile cool down and abs afterwards.

Drove out to a nice dirt backroad along a horse farm for our easy run today. 45 minutes at conversational pace. Man I love tapering :) calves were tight at first but they loosened up about 3 miles in.

Mile warm up, "moderate workout" of 1 mile at 1st mile race pace + 5x150m sprints. My mile split was 6:18, which is about right. 2 mile cool down afterwards. Not a very eventful practice!

Easy 30 minutes with Breck + 5x30sec strides. I've really been working on picking up my knees (I have 0 knee drive) lately, even on easy runs. Hopefully that may be able to help me on Friday!

30 minute jog & 5x30sec strides. This taper is too real

The final pre-meet! We left Wofford at lunchtime and ran the course & did strides right before dinner when we got there. I love this course. I am honestly so excited!! Which is big because I never really get "excited" for meets any more. I used to in high school all the time because I was in contention to win a lot of them. It is a little harder now that in college it is basically the norm to be in the 19-18's or lower. But anyways I am super excited, I have a really good feeling about the race time-wise. I just know I can break 20 again, but I feel like I can even PR. I just feel like God has great things in store, do you ever get that feeling? I'm ready to get out there and push every limit I thought I had.

Chandler showed me this awesome article that I've read a hundred times tonight because it makes me so excited to race tomorrow -http://m.runnersworld.com/high-school-profiles/thats-why-i-run?page=single I'll probably read it a few more times before the race. 

So we get to the meet and its 45 and sunny. A lot of my girls were like freezing but I actually thought it felt fantastic, like just uncomfortable enough to where I could tell it would be perfect after a warm up. I feel like I run well in the cold, must be a mountain thing. We warmed up maybe 13 or 14 minutes and then did all our pre-race stuff. I kept looking for my dad who was on his way from back home, but I never saw him before the race started.

The gun went off and all the teams went out fairly fast, but I was more focused on sticking around Anya and Alissa for the first mile at least. I heard coach Bomar yell that they came through the mile at about 5:50, and me at 5:55. That was awesome to hear because I wasn't that tired, but that was the fastest first mile I've ever had. Next closest was on this course last year, during the race where my PR was set, with a 5:58. So I knew I was on track to beat it. I finally saw my dad near the mile marker too. I caught up to Anya on the hill about 400 meters later, but she took off again on the downhill afterwards. I feel like if there was any point in the race that I took it a little bit easier, it was breifly during this next part, maybe 1.5 in. Mell passed me, which actually made me kind of happy because I was glad to know she was seriously racing this and doing well. She's been on the comeback from an injury and sometimes races are discouraging for her I think. Some negative thoughts accumulated in my head knowing I still had a mile and a half to go but I quickly pushed them out and reminded myself that "it takes a bit more." That was kind of my mental saying throughout the race. I came through the 2 mile at 12:28, which was also awesome to hear because it wasn't that long ago that 12:28 was as fast as I could run 2 miles period, and here I am with another mile to go! Chandler and I went back and forth a little bit for this mile, which was a blessing because even though we were too tired to talk, there was definitely unspoken encouragement to one another when we were near. We worked together up the final hill, marking about 400m to go, and then I left her. I passed a girl from Mercer and one other and just kicked as best I could. Finished with a 19:31, 11 seconds faster than my 19:42 previous PR.

I definitely think I ran as well as I could have, which is a great feeling. I had no more gas left when I came through the finish. I was so excited because I know so many of my teammates were near me, and therefore must have been under 20 too. Turns out our top 6 were sub-20, which is awesome seeing as Alissa was our only consisten sub-20-er this season! She went 18:54. We still didn't place well as a team, but I was very happy about our improvement regardless. I just feel so blessed to have such a wonderful and close family to call my team, and also that my dad was able to come down 4 hours to watch me. 

Now we get a week off, and then its time for track!! Indoor season time!