Suzette's Running Blog.

Well, i have to say that today was an interesting day. At the start of workout, my leg had begun hurting but i kept ignoring it until the pain was truly unbearable. My leg ended up dying by the end of my first speed change for warm-up. Then i went and told Coach and he told me to do strides and i did. Halfway into practice, Gustavo ended up figuring out what was going on and he massaged it. I must admit, it was a horrible pain while it was being massaged, but afterwards it felt so much better. He then wrapped it up in tape and viola! I was able to run! It felt amazing to be able to run without pain that i ended up finishing my speed changes and i ran the perimeter of the football field multiple times without it hurting! I then finished my practice off with two grass laps around the stadium. It felt amazing to run without pain- something i have not experienced in WEEKS!

Sadly, I missed morning practice today by sleeping through my 5:15 a.m. alarm clock. Getting to morning practice lately has been so difficult with such little sleep due to my studies. My studies are very important to me and i will sacrifice sleep for them. 

In the afternoon, however i went on the run as instructed to. It was a five mile run but since i have lost some of my strength to push through runs with my leg hurting and having to do incomplete workouts, i ended up walking two portions of the run and having to stop and stretch my injured leg somewhat to lower the pain so that it is 'tolerable' to run on. I was in a lot of pain by the end. I hope that tomorrow it will be gone so i can race well! 

Was really excited to race today because it was a tri-meet and those are really, really fun! I love them! Sadly, i ended up not running it because i could feel my leg giving out only on the warm-up and it was just under two miles. I am supposed to go see a doctor according tomorrow and i really hope i do; simply stated: I'm tired of being in pain constantly. Where is the relief? For the rest of my mileage i ended up accompanying Abigail on her cool down so that i would at least push through and get some mileage in and not have today be a complete waste of time. If only certain people on our team would understand that. Something is always better than nothing unless you are severely injured. I don't plan to stop running until after regions and if i qualify-state. 

I am going to have to start running harder even if it really decapitates me if i want to take regions. It's only a few more days; six to be exact. I can do this.  

Went to early morning practice for a nice morning workout. We started off to running out to the gully, which we have not ran in almost all summer long! We did two laps around the gully and it was pitch black. You could hardly see where the trail was or anything and there often was no handrail separating the trail and the river but that running it was really fun! Even though it was fairly dangerous. Then we all ran back to the track and did 10 strides as long as the length of the soccer field. For a cool down, we did two grass laps around the stadium. This had to be one of the best morning workouts for a very long time and my leg was not hurting! Until the end, but thats ok-because it was the end of workout. 

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!