Since we had no morning practice and my leg tends to start hurt after few miles and on Wednesday i ended up not running my race due to strong pain, i decided that it was best to not go for a shake-out run. We were excused from school halfway through the day to begin our trip to Cedar City for our Invitational. Since i was pretty tired because i have not been getting as much sleep as i need, i ended up sleeping for about 30 minutes of the trip. Those 30 minutes may not seem like much, but it was and it felt reviving. The trip was about four hours long and by the time we arrived to Cedar High School for our Invitational, we had about 20 minutes before the start of our race. For warm-up, i took the girls around the school and ended up running around the inside of the school rather quickly while looking for bathrooms. The second the girls were done, I took them back outside. We did some strides inside the school whenever we saw a long hallway. Once we got outside, we ran back to our shady spot to get our name tags and ran to the starting line with five minutes to spare. During those five minutes, we did some strides so that we could stay warmed up and stretched whatever muscles needed to be stretched. Then this guy came forth and began explaining us the course (very badly). Then i noticed that he raised his arm and it had the gun ready to be fired. (I think most people were waiting for the regular routine of taking 'three steps back from the starting line,' and then waiting for the whistle to get up to the starting line.) I then focused on the course ahead of me and waited for the gun. The second the gun started, i went out as fast as i could without burning myself out for the rest of the race for the first 400 meters. I then began my duties of passing people and not letting anyone pass me. I strongly desired taking a good place in this race. After the first 800 meters of the race, most people began to die off so it began to become an easier task to pass people. Eventually i got myself all the way up to 11th place and then up to 10th!! I held up my 10th place for the last mile of the race until this one girl outkicked me in the last 300 meters of the race. I was not happy because the top ten get medals and i was eleventh... It felt like a mediocre spot to be in. Eventually, everyone got me to realize that it was not so bad to have gotten 11th place because to begin with it was out of roughly 120 girls and because i have been relatively injured for many weeks now. My time was 22:14. After my race i took the girls on a cool down and then took some of the varsity girls and give them tips about the course while they warmed up while i cooled down. Then we went out for a pizza dinner and i got congratulated by many people and many parents at that restaurant for my performance at the race! Team dinner at this restaurant was really fun along with the bus ride back! I loved this meet!
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