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.
My week started a little rough. I was just doing a simple 25 min tempo run at home, but my calves were the tightest they’ve ever been on a run (I went to the Patriot’s game Sunday and spent the whole day standing around and didn’t get a run in). I somehow managed to get through it. Wednesday, I managed to do one of the hardest hill workouts I’ve ever done. We ran up the back side of Devil’s (which is much tougher than the front side) Chair six times, at race pace, the last five times immediately turning around and continuing race pace to the bottom. It was .3 miles up and another .3 down. We were all pretty miserable during the workout, but stayed real positive thinking about the fact the other teams don’t get to train on this hill.
The rest of the week was pretty easy until we got to states Saturday. I got to the course at Colby and just felt kind of flat. I didn’t feel terrible warming up, but the race started and everyone just seemed so super-fast. I ended up hitting the mile seven seconds slower than last time we raced here. After the mile, I managed to pick up my pace from last time, and made a big move passing a ton of people on the long uphill. I hit the three mile in the same split as last time, and managed to run the last two miles in 11:48 to beat my best time on the course by twelve seconds. The team didn’t fare too well. Everyone seemed to kind of have a flat race. We’ve been training hard for quite some time and haven’t backed off yet. I was number one runner for the first time all season, which wasn’t something I wanted going into Saturday. It was pretty disheartening when three miles in I saw Nick was right in front of me, and obviously having a bad race.
The team bounced back big time. Sunday was the Terrier Trot 5k; the course is mostly uphill first half, downhill second half. We took it out nice and easy through the first half in about 9:40. When we got to the turnaround, we went as hard as our legs would let us. Nick ended up running 17:35, I ran 17:37 (thought I had him with 100m to go!)
It’s weird having states over with already. We’re now less than two weeks from our conference championship. Seems like just yesterday it was August and we were running in the 90 degree heat, thinking about what might be. Well the time’s arriving, and it’s time to act!