Follow senior distance runner Nora Hubbell of Mt Desert Island as she blogs about her xc season. Hubbell fInished 9th in the Class B State chapionship 2 years ago, last fall she ended her season early. She runs for the 2 time defending state champions MDI, who will be going for a 3rd title in a row this fall.
I keep trying to write this blog, but every time I try to write an honest explanation of why I’m not finishing my cross country season, it makes me so incredibly frustrated that I can’t finish it. As it stands, the short version is that I’m training with Louie Luchini for the remainder of the fall with plans to compete at Footlockers, and getting my GED and starting at USM in January. In the mean time, I’ve been watching ridiculous amounts of Netflix and actually attempting my alternate writing project for National Novel Writing Month with about the same amount of success that I’ve recently had with this blog.
One of the few things I can easily be honest about is that the entire month of September was tough for me. I wasn’t able to run for several weeks, and in some ways my entire life was uprooted and taken out of my control. My current outlook is that this might be a blessing in disguise. Training with Louie has been a fantastic experience. I’ve stopped doing mountain runs, which has been great. I was a bit uncertain at first, but I’ve been realizing that the whole not running up mountains thing that most people do is much more fun. I’ve been doing more interval work as well, which is something that I’m not that used to. I’ve regained a lot of my confidence in my running and abilities, which was completely destroyed for most of the past year. I’ve had more runs in the past month where I finished thinking “that felt good” than I did in the six months before that.
The only downside to training with Louie is that it’s completely solo and I don’t have anyone to run with. In some ways it feels a lot like indoor last year, because the team was tiny to begin for most of the season there was always at least one person who was sick. I don’t mind having to push myself independently of others, because it does build mental toughness, but it’s starting to reach the point where I don’t know how well I’m actually doing. I do miss that aspect of a team.
Despite my lack of teammates, my workouts have been going well. Coming off my week-long break I did a good set of mile and two mile repeats, with the last mile repeat being a solid 50 seconds faster than the pace of the other repeats, and didn’t feel nearly as challenging as I expected. There was a particularly brutal set of 1000s which coincided with the MDI team doing a hill workout next to the track, which was in some ways more mentally strenuous than anything else. I had a 12x400 workout which I absolutely loved--I have a lot of fun doing 200 and 400 repeats, I’m not sure why. Last Saturday I did my first 5K race in a ridiculously long time. It was following a tough training week and one of the most spectacularly terrible race preparations that I have ever done, so despite going out in 6:30 by mistake I managed to run 21:24, which I’m pleased with considering the circumstances. In typical intelligent fashion, I spent the remainder of the day sprinting around the Belfast course at Eastern Maines supporting my friends with my dad. I’m glad I got to see all of the runners I’ve known over the past four years, and it was a pleasure to see so many of you run fantastic times. The truth is that one way or another we’re all going to keep moving forward, staying strong, and doing the best we can. To all of you, whether I’ve known you personally or never had a real conversation with you, I’m so thankful for your support, especially that of everyone that I spoke to at Eastern Maine who said they were glad to see me there. Also, as I don’t think I’ve expressed this directly, I’m so touched by all the responses I received to my last blog. I read all of them, even if I didn’t respond directly, and the support from the people that I do and don’t know personally means the world to me. As I’m finishing this (finally) on Friday night, I’m sending positive thoughts to everyone competing at States tomorrow, but I’m assuming this won’t be posted for a few days so good luck at New Englands to all who will have qualified by then! Run strong.
