Our newest blogger is Will Janakis formerly of Marshwood and presently a junior at Thomas College. Janakis fnished 15th in the North Atlantic conference championship last year running 29:02. Follow Will in his junior xc season for Thomas College.
This past week has been one of the hardest for me, physically and mentally, in quite some time. Monday started off with 20x400m repeats. We ran them on a trail at Winslow high school that’s a bit winding and was a little muddy this past week. The recovery was just a 200m cut-across jog back to the start line. I ran all of mine between 73 and 76 seconds. I didn’t feel terrible running, but I was still a little tired from my weekend mileage (11 Saturday; 10 Sunday). With all the reps and the warm ups and cool downs involved, it ended up being an 11 mile day. I was pretty happy; I only managed 16 in this work out a year ago, so it appears I’m making some sort of progress!
Come the next morning I was in rough shape; my right hip was killing me and both my legs were super sore, so I ran an easy 6.5 and loosened up a little bit. The next day we did a tempo run: 10 min easy, 25 min hard, and 10 min easy. In the tempo I ran just over four miles— 6:15 6:16 6:14 5:42. The road we ran it on was the same as last time; it’s fairly hilly and my shins were really hurting. I probably could have been a bit faster, but mentally I was just kind of checked out and coasting until the last mile when Nick took off and told me to go with him. By the time the workout was over, my shins and sides of my legs felt like they were going to melt off; I could barely walk. Thursday was an easy five in the woods where I ran rather slowly, as I was sore and not really enjoying any of it. Come Friday, I did an easy 4 on the road where my shins were in agony the whole time.
Come race day I was limping. The majority of the pain was coming from my left leg at this point. There was a really tight bulge high up on my calf that was irritating a tendon going down the whole side on my leg. I really debated not racing, but I’ve never missed a race due to injury and figured I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ducked out. The gun went off and my animal instincts immediately kicked in. I heard the thunder of footsteps all around me and found myself in the biggest field of runners in an XC meet I’ve faced since festival of champions my senior year. The first mile I thought the XC gods were looking over me. I ran what felt like the most conservative 5:35 of my life. About a mile and a half in I felt my left leg really start to tighten up both my legs slowly started deteriorating. I hit the 4 mile mark in 23:57 and knew I would really have to push if I wanted to be sub-30 at this point. I managed a real strong push until 600m to go when I got one of the strongest cramps of my life. The last 300m ended up taking me around 80-90 sec. Somehow I managed to run 29:57.
My initial reaction was being pretty upset, because it always sucks when you have an off race, even if it’s not in your control. The people I’ve beaten in the past few weeks or been right behind all ran high 27s to mid 28s, so I just have to believe for now that my fitness is there and just keep working for my chance to prove it. On the positive side of things (life isn’t all an XC soap opera on my season) 6 out of our top 7 all ran lifetime PR’s! The team is really stoked about where we feel we’re headed. Next time I go to USM, things will go differently!
The team has next weekend off. I will be running the Elliot festival day 5k but don’t yet know whether I’ll race it or jog it with my little sister!