Back on the Bus
Regionals Recap: 11th, 30:04.31
Now that I’ve had a while to vent and recover, here’s how it went. It was a solid race for me, not great but solid, so there was no reason to walk away dissapointed except that I missed out on the 4th and final individual spot by .06sec. To make matters worse, I thought I had a good shot at getting one of the two at large bids. The last at large bid went to someone who got 10th in their region, so once again I was .06sec out of tenth, and the first guy not to go to nationals….
In the race itself, I ended up basically even splitting the thing and hanging on to the lead pack until 4.5mi or around there. I fell off a bit but was still within grasp. Right before 5miles I zoned out and almost missed a turn which ended up costing me a second or two, which came back and bit me in the ass. With 1 mile to go, I made the decision in my head that I had to go if I wanted to make nationals. So I slowly started to close the gap and planned on using the downhill that started with 1km to go to get momentum going and really blast the last part. Unfortunately, with 1km to go I got a horrible side stitch. I altered my stride a little bit and tried to keep fighting. This sort of worked for a little bit, but with 500m to go, the altering of the stride caused it to hurt even more. At this point, I was a mess and looked like absolute crap according to my friend who saw me with 200m to go. I was huntched over, just trying to will myself to keep going.
I’ll be honest, at this point I wasn’t even sure if I could run all the way to the finish line. I was struggling bad with the stitch. Forrest from Arkansas was quickly gaining and my hopes of nationals seemed to be drifting away as 10th place, Festus Kigen, was about 30m ahead of me. With 100m to go, Forrest closing fast on me, and Kigen still 25m or so ahead, I put my head down leaned way forward(it was the only way I could get the stitch to sort of subside) and sprinted like mad……..and I almost made it. As you know now, I came up just short.
It was hard and I took it hard. Senior year and I feel like I can run soo much better at 10k, especially at nationals. It was tough, but it may be the kick in the ass I needed. It’s similar to how I missed out on nationals my senior year in HS by 2 sec…except .06 in a longer race hurts more.
Anyways, I’m moving on and going to have a great track season. I’m considering running Club Nats just for fun, so we’ll see.
Below is the training for the past couple days:
11/13/2007
8mi at solid pace, 5:45-5:50 pace
11/14/2007
morn-6mi at a decent pace, 10x100m (2E,1G) after
aft-8mi of
1mi w/up, LT run- 10LT, 1E, then 4x5LT w/ 1E after each 1mi c/d
11/15/2007
morn-14 at a solid pace w/ Jacob Phillips, started easy progressed throughout until the last few miles, we were running 5:45 pace
afternoon-5mi of
easy, 2.25mi easy, 12x100m (2 easy, 1good) 2mi easy-continuous
11/16/2007
morning- 8mi easy
afternoon-5mi of
2.25mi w/up, 5xstrides, 4x100m from standing start w/ 5ish rest (11.9,12.0,12.0,11.8) 400m jog after the 2nd one, 2mi c/d
11/17/2007
10mi of
1mi easy, 6mi progression run on 2.1mi loops (loops-12:05 (5:50@mi),11:10 (5:22@mi),10:29(5:02@mi), 3mi easy w/ 10x100m (2easy,1good) in middle
