California trip
Well I learned a couple of things this weekend.
1. I am not a “mudder.” I actually already knew this, but it was confirmed this past weekend. My running style doesn’t suit mud very well. I lose too much with each stride.
2. I definately did not have enough hill work for this XC race. This I kind of expected. I am okay on hills but not great. I tried to run on hills and do some longer hill work leading up to this race but living in Houston and having to commute 45min to classes 3 days a week limited my trips out to the only park (20min drive) around that has any substantially long hills.
Other than that, the race went okay. It was just frusterating because I would fly past people on the flat, and then fall back on the hills. So it was like I was running a fartlek for 10k, which is not a lot of fun.
Besides that, the trip was fun. It was good to get in a big competitive field and mix it up and have some fun. Also, my running form was good throughout (well not for mudding, but for what I’m working on which is flat/track running). I also had a nice kick which was mostly due to the fact that the last part was flat and I could finally open up some and go. Breathing recovered very quickly after, so that was a good sign. Although my legs are pretty beat up and sore, plus I got a couple nice spike marks, including one that got my on the shin bone. It’ll probably take a couple days to get back to normal. That means easy days for a while now.
Back to training now and figuring out where to go and race during track. The plan is to mix it up quiet a bit this year. Try some 800s, 1500s, miles, 3ks and a 5k. Just have fun with it. So I’m looking forward to that! No idea where I’ll be racing though. Looking around for meets I can get into that will be good and competitive, so if you got any suggestions let me know.
