Running is a means and never merely an end

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.