Dylan Lajoie Weekly Athlete Fall XC Blog #9

Week of 10/13 – 10/19

Monday: White Oak Hill Loop (8 miles)

Tuesday: Mile hard, 4x400 at 5k pace, Mile hard

Wednesday: 40 Minutes easy

Thursday: 30 minutes easy

Friday: Race at GNG

Saturday: 60 Minutes at Twin Brook

Sunday: Off

Feeling good. Finally. All last week I was feeling great, and hitting workouts well. I got to run the White Oak Hill Loop on Monday at a fairly easy pace. It is one of my favorite longer loops, but it was pretty boring not having anyone to run it with. It was a great start to the week though, and it got me feeling real fresh.

Tuesday was my best workout of the week by far, and maybe my best work out of the season. It was all done on the track, and the soccer team was getting warmed up to a great techno CD that their coach had put together for them, and it really kept me in rhythm during the repeats. I busted out my first mile in 5:08, a little fast considering I wanted to be going just faster then my goal 5k pace, which is around 5:20. I was worried this might hurt me through the rest of my workout, but I was wrong. I hit all of my 400’s faster then race pace, going 76, 76, 75, 73. After that was another strong mile, rounding out in 5:13, which was still considerably faster then what I needed to be going. All in all, this workout was a huge mental booster for me.

The rest of the week was easy until our home meet at GNG High School. Yea, our home course was at a different high school. Anyways, it was the toughest course I had run this season. It was only the third true 5k I had run all season as well.

I knew I wanted to take the pace out pretty slowly. The first two miles of this course is up hill. I let Kennedi Hall from Fyretown do the work for the first 3 or 4 minutes, until I thought I had worked into a good rhythm, and passed him. We came through the first mile in a 5:55, which I honestly thought was way to slow, but the second mile came in at even slower. I hit a 12:05 at that point, and knew I had to get rockin’ on the last 1.1 of the course. I knew Kennedi was still on my heels, but at that point we had gotten past all the major hills, which was his strength.

I maintained a solid lead until about a half mile out. There were all this little hills. You couldn’t even really call them hills, humps would be a better word to describe it. We hit them, and being the tall, lanky kid that I am I made the mistake of not shortening my strides. This gave Kennedi a real big jump, and he passed me just before coming out of the woods to finish up the race. By the time we did manage to get into the open field, it was to late. I started to close on him in the last 200, but that wasn’t a long enough distance for me to retake the lead, and he held me off. I finished with a time of 17:43, which seems how it was on the toughest course I have seen this season, and my fastest 5k time since mid-summer, I will take it.

Saturday was even more fun. I got the chance to attend the Maine State College Meet at Twin Brook. Everything fell in place perfectly, being able to see a school that I am interested in compete, while getting the chance to run the course that my big meet will be held on the next week.

I got to put in 60 minutes on the course with my coach, and eventually found James LePage who we tagged along with for the majority of our run, which was cool. It’s nice now, towards the end of the season where I get to see a lot of my friends from around the area more, and even the opportunity to run with them. It also kind of gets you in the mental mind set for your next race. After the run I got to hang out with some other friends of mine who also came to the meet and some who competed as well. It was a good learning experience, as I had never seen a college race in my life.

All of this just gets me more excited for regionals later in the week. It is on one of my favorite courses, and this was my big break out meet last year, so naturally I have high expectations. I can say however that at this point I feel the best that I have all season, and feel that I am ready to put up stronger performances. I only hope I live up to my own standards.