Week of February 9-16
Monday: I forget… some kind of LSD (Long Slow Distance)
Tuesday: 10 minute warm up, 5x400 repeats with jog recovery, cool down
Wednesday: 35 minute run
Thursday: 25 minute run
Friday: 10 minute warm up, 6x200 repeats with jog recovery, cool down
Saturday: off, team dinner!
Sunday: 25 minute run, 4 strides, ice bath
Monday: STATES!!!!
Training recap:
It was kind of strange training for a Monday meet, and doing 200 repeats on a Friday instead of an easy 25-minute run. For the most part though, the training was the same as usual, just with less mileage and fewer/faster sprints.
Meet recap:
This was my first time running on an indoor track other than the one at UMO! I missed States when I did indoor my sophomore year because I went on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic, but this year I decided that States was more important. I LOVED the Bates track, although it was very strange running without the banked corners and the stickiness. I still am pretty attached to the UMO track though, it’s got character. My dad ran on it when he was in high school…
The 4x8-
I was so incredibly excited to run the 4x8 in States. I feel like I am more team-oriented, and this event definitely helped set the tone for the rest of the meet. Our coach had bought us stick-on tattoos of the Incredibles, and before the meet started we all went to put them on together (I got the tattoo of Dash). At the beginning of the season our coach had also bought us all matching pairs of long, green polka-dotted “lucky socks”, but only two of us had remembered to bring ours, so instead we each wore one lucky sock on our right feet. We really didn’t know what to expect, because we were seeded 7th and had never run against most of the other teams. Our goal was just to get out there and try to place higher than our seed. The other girls ran phenomenally- especially Caitie, who is just a freshman and Kymry, our 2nd leg, who moved up into the lead and held it almost until the handoff. I was the third leg, and we were in a good position by the time I got the baton, so I just went out fast and tried to hold the pace. My split ended up being a 2:29. Kailyn was our anchor leg because she has a super speedy kick, which paid off because she out-sprinted the Falmouth and York girls for a 3rd place finish. We also took about 30 seconds off our seed time to break our indoor school record and qualify for New Englands!!
The Mile-
I was both excited and nervous for this event, but was hoping that all the fast girls would push me to run a faster time. I think everyone’s times were slower than they could have been in this event however, because the lap counter said we had an extra lap to run for the whole race, so there was never a gun lap either. It definitely messed me up a little bit, because I only stopped running when I saw that the Cape girls had finished. Talking to the other girls after, it seemed like it really threw everyone off. We talked to one of the officials before the awards, but there was obviously nothing that could have been done at that point. Other than being a little disappointed at the officials for not being able to count down from 8, I was a little mad at myself for being stuck in the “if they have a lower number on their hip, it’s ok if they are in front of me” mentality. I just kind of sat behind the lead pack of girls and let them lead. I finished in the place I was seeded to finish, (5th), but my time wasn’t what I had hoped it would be (a 5:34). The important part was that I still felt strong after my mile, none of the symptoms from last week were showing, and it gave me determination to place higher than my seed for the 2 mile.
The 2 mile-
My ultimate goal for this race was to break 12 minutes, to run a smart first mile, and to finish higher than my 6th-place seed. I did all three! I wasn’t sure how well I would run, because it was my third event of the day, but most of the other girls had already done one or two events also, and there was plenty of recovery time between events. For the first mile I didn’t really care about what place I was in, I just focused on running a 6 minute mile. My splits were pretty even, and I came across the mile in about 6:01 or 6:02. From there I just started passing people, and it definitely paid off for me to have run a slower first mile than the rest of the girls, because they started coming back to me even though I didn’t really change my pace that much. This was one of the few races where I actually wished it could have been a little bit longer, because I think I kept gaining steam in the last couple laps. I was definitely excited to have finished second though, and I ran a negative split for the second mile for an overall time of 11:59.
I am really excited to be able to run the 2 mile relatively fresh in New Englands, because I feel like I can get my time even faster if I am able to focus primarily on that event. I also can’t wait to run the 4x8, the other girls definitely deserve the opportunity to go after we missed qualifying during cross country because of my DNF in the State meet. Thank God the MPA let us keep New Englands!!