BYU Invitational

It is so good to be back in Utah to race.  The atmosphere before these meets is so much more relaxed after having run the first half of my season at out-of-state meets, and it's been fun to spend time with my teammates and friends before I run.  Last weekend, I competed at the BYU invitational, and it was a blast.  I've been going to this particular meet every year since I was a freshman, but sophomore and junior year, I was overtrained by this point in the season, so it wasn't all that enjoyable.  This year, I felt pretty fresh and excited going in.  It was about 90 degrees on Saturday, and I did spend the majority of the day outside, so I felt a little sluggish going into the race itself.  It was also Jacob's birthday, so I was a little more focused on going to dinner with him afterwards than I was on the 1600.
I was in the Golden Hour, which is just the fastest heat of every event lumped into the last few hours of the meet.  Things were a little behind schedule, though, so I ended up finished my warmup an hour before I even needed to run.  There was also a slight mishap at the bullpen, as I was nearly not allowed to enter since the boys measuring spikes thought mine were too long.  I nearly had a panic attack because my race was starting in five minutes, and I briefly considered fighting them.  But Jacob had spikes that were short enough, and he and his teammates helped me switch them out in time to frantically dash onto the track.
The race itself wasn't nearly as stressful as it typically is.  I just carried out the strategy I worked out with my coach earlier, and ended up passing the leader with 700m to go.  It was a fun race, and it was the first one I've ever won at that invitational, which was definitely very exciting.
I won't compete again until state in two weeks, so I'll have plenty of time to recover and get some quality workouts in.  And I'll be crossing my fingers that it will rain at state until it comes because racing in the rain is scientifically proven to be 550x more fun.