You've got to want it to win it

4 miles in the morning with Ellie in the stroller. It was raining on the way to the Jordan River trail so I considered not running with Ellie and maybe trying to double in the evening, but it stopped by the time I got there and didn't rain at all during. It was a nice run.

For practice I joined the afternoon group. Because there was lightning, we weren't allowed to run outside, so we went to the student life center instead. I did 8 miles on the track, the first few miles with teammates before they hopped on treadmills.

There was lightning again today at practice time and on the forecast it didn't look like we would catch a long enough gap between flashes to get our workout in outside, so we hit the treadmills. I went to the Smith with Hannah, Giselle, Sarah, Shaylen, and Andrea. The treadmills were set in two groups of three so I ran next to Hannah and Sarah since they were in my group. The workout was a 7 mile tempo. My group was supposed to warm up the first mile, getting to 6:40 pace. Over the next mile and a half we had to drop 10-13 seconds in our pace, and the next two sets of mile and a half after that. Then we were supposed to maintain pace the last mile and a half. I used my watch for splits and got 7:28 (finishing at pace), 9:49, 9:31, 9:13, and 8:59. It was hard! And I rained sweat all over my treadmill, but it was a good workout. Cooled down 2 more miles before finishing with strides. Weight out was only .5# less than weight in.

There was lightning again before practice today so Shaylen and I started our runs on the treadmill. After about a mile we had the all clear so we went outside. We ran fruit loops and then after Shaylen turned around I continued above the zoo and onto Wasatch on my own. The wind chill on the way back was awful! I was glad to finish that run.

We had a workout on the balliff today. We did the usual warmup (we saw a snake in the gutter!) and then strides and drills on the field. The workout was three sets of 200, 300, 300 with equal jog recovery. I hit 41-42s on the 200s and 61-62s on the 300s. Cooled down to finish with 8 total.

Rode the bus to Montana today. We did a run at a park and then did drills before going to the course. We ran the last mile of the course and then switched to spikes for strides. 

This morning at the course it was cool and frost covered. 50 minutes before the race we started our warmup. That plus the strides and drills got me 2.25 miles. I changed shoes and then did strides on the starting line. The plan was to work on our pack running again. Kep determined our starting positions in the box, I was second row center because I don't get out as fast as my teammates. When the race started, I found myself too far back once we had to collapse in after the opening field. But I didn't think my team was in the best place either, with the complete Idaho State and Utah State teams in front of them. After about 800 meters I finally was able to get in the pack with Andrea, Jessica, and Jocelyn. The first mile was around 5:53-54, slower than my two previous mile splits on this course (so glad I documented it all in this blog) but knowing I got to that point with my teammates and there were still two miles left in the race I knew it was ok. We didn't really have a set point where we were going to break away and really race, but I wasn't going to sit behind the other teams and wait because that's not a race. I started to move up through the packs, and then once we were through the wooded part and back on the grass again I was towards the front of the Utah State pack. A few of their girls pushed up so I just went with them. There were a few Montana State girls ahead of us, and two who had really gone out up there, so they were the targets. Coming up on the 2 mile mark there were two Utah State girls up there, one had caught one Montana girl and was working on the other. Another Utah State girl and I passed the Montana girl as well and kept moving forward. During the last mile with probably around 800 to go I felt that I was closing the gap on the Montana girl and USU girl. Andrea caught up to me at that point and I really wanted her to come with me, but she fell back and I was on my own again. The two girls ahead of me were contending with one another and I was too far back to be in it with them. The USU girl passed the Montana girl on the home stretch (those rolling hills are the worst) and then once I got past the rolling hills there was a USU girl on my shoulder and she really made me kick. I got her by .13 or .23 seconds. Also I ran the same time and got the same place today as I did on this course two years ago. Talk about consistency. Afterwards I went and called my mom and told her I got third. I didn't realize until awards that I was actually 4th because there was one girl who had taken off at the beginning and finished about a minute before everyone else. I didn't even see her at all. I guess that is what happens when you don't get out fast enough, you miss things. I cooled down as much as I could before awards and then after until we had to get on the bus. I was just a half mile short of what I was supposed to hit today. I'm really happy with how the team did today, there was just 14 seconds from our first to fifth place! And we won by 4 points!  All of our top 5 made top 10, so that was also really neat! It's always a great day to be a Ute!