Week of: September 15th – 21st
Training
Monday: mile repeats on course
Tuesday: 9 miles on roads + a little speed work
Wednesday: 3 miles easy
Thursday: 3 miles easy/medium, then 1+/- mile very easy (card game day)
Friday: Meet @ Leavitt, then 8 minute speed workout in fields
Saturday: core work, speed work
Sunday: core work / off
This week was better in terms of my mileage. I was feeling pretty good for most of it. I should have taken Tuesday a little easier but I had nobody to run with so I went with Jaron Jones and Alex Luchini. We ran to Kelton's house and in his huge back yard and stuff.. then Jaron ate a tomato out of their garden. Kelton lives in a weird sketchy town (Chesterville), and I kept feeling like we were in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre scene, so we decided to start calling Chesterville Texas. On Thursday we had our card game day, so basically we all went out to do a workout while Kelley and BK hid playing cards (and other bonus objects) all along the course (within reason). I usually suck at it, but this year I found like 9 and I was happy. We had a team of 4 (max 5) and split up into 2 groups. Me and Sarah Deveau found 11 or so I think, and the other two; Lizzi and Lindsey, found quite a few too. They also found one of the “bonus” objects, only it was a burger king coupon so when we turned it in they were like “you get minus 2 points for this because this is not a good thing to eat!” so we were all like... whaaaaaat, lameeee! We had no idea what the bonus things would be so me and Sarah kept picking up random trash along the course... like.. oh hey, Lays chip bag, must be a bonus... uhh nope never mind it's just random trash laying on our course, “AWESOME” (throw it back on the ground). Then Sarah found a beer bottle, which I thought should have been a bonus item just because she touched it. Even though we thought we did good, we actually did quite terrible, and only got 137 pts, while the winning team (Shelby Aseltine, Caitlin Douglass, and whoever else was on theirs) ended up with 300 something! It was pretty fun though, and every year we always end up missing a bunch of cards so we find them while we're doing workouts and stuff later on. Overall, good week, minus Wednesday cause I went to the doctor's and missed practice and ended up running a little by myself which is never too fun for me.
I just logged onto Facebook and looked at my horoscope (yes I do that) and it said: “No matter the result, you gave something your all, and you should be very proud of that.” I always get a little freaked out because my horoscope always corresponds to something happening at the very moment (or in the day).
We had a race today at Leavitt against Leavitt, Cony, Maranacook, Oxford Hills, and Belfast. Last year I ran a 21:55 and placed 6th behind: Megan Nealey, Jenny Monsulick, Hannah Bard, Silver, and Taylor Burr. This year I ended up with 20:52 placing 2nd behind Abby Mace(19:33). I wasn't very nervous for this meet, until we were at the starting line and the guy did a test-shoot with the gun and everyone thought it was the real thing, so we all kind of stutter stepped a couple times, then sprinted out for a few steps, and were quickly stopped as it was not the real start. It was embarrassing, hilarious, and a little scary. After that I was a little jumped cause when he blew the test shot I was still standing awkward, adjusting my triple wedgie from my underwear, under armour, and built in underwear in our uniform shorts (which I end up doing about 5 times during races anyway). Then we had the REAL start. Abby took the lead then it was Taylor Burr(Maranacook), and Morgan Beede(Cony) with me just squeezing in between them. I started out a little comfortable just because I have been trying to pace lately, but then I wasn't sure if I should hang back for a little bit or just go for it and try to get the early lead ahead of them, but worrying that I might fall back later on made me go ahead when we got to the first tiny downhill going into the woods at the start. I could see Abby for a little while, but then I just stopped trying to look for her, and started making sure I was keeping my lead and not falling back. The thing that often confuses me is when I run by a group of people, and they cheer for me, but then I hear them cheering for the person behind me, and I don't know if they are cheering for them because they are right behind me, or because they can see them down a long ways or something. I try not to look back though. I had a pretty solid pace going, and my goal was 21's or sub, so when I got to Satan's Inferno, I just kind of made myself keep pace up it (which I don't think I've ever done before) and then keep thinking about the long downhill after it. So I took the hill nicely, then just let myself roll down the hills (not literally, but I should try that sometime), and I was moving down those things, and it felt pretty good. The last mile was pretty easy, and the finish came sooner than it seemed it would, which was very nice because, well..I was tired. We ended up having an extremely good race team wise, and our top 5 took places 2, 6, 7, 9 and 10 to take the win ahead of Leavitt by 27 points. Our order was a little different today, and everyone did fantastic: Addie Cullenberg stepped up and ran as our #2 runner in 22:46, then it was Gwen Beacham, Shelby Aseltine, and Hannah West all in low 23's. The rest of the team did amazing as well, with tons of PR's and season bests, it was a good day for a race. I've been so proud of our team as we keep improving, whether it's physically or mentally we're becoming more of a team every meet, and really learning what we can do when we put all of our efforts together. It's a really good feeling to have a solid team that is ready to work hard, and go far, which I believe and hope we will.
This year I'm going to be on a team for USATF! It's going to be so sweet. So far it's me, Taylor Burr(Maranacook), Morgan Beede(Cony), Kaitlyn Marks (from Cony who plays soccer but is a strong runner), and Sarah Croston(Brunswick). It's really exciting because we're so used to racing against each other that racing as our own team will be something fun and a really good experience for all of us. We're going to have a strong team, and I'm really looking forward to racing with them and I hope it all works out!
We have a meet next Thursday at Brunswick, and then a few of us are going to Manchester next Saturday. It will be a fun race and will let us see the course and a ton of competition, including several teams from Maine. I think we will all be running the elite race since we don't have full teams going, should be interesting....