This past weekend, the NCAA pre-nationals were held in Louisville, Kentucky. This was my first big college meet, and the first time I have raced a 6k, so it was a fairly new experience for me.
We departed Bozeman and spent most of the day traveling Thursday, so there wasn't much time for sightseeing or entertainment, but since the race wasn't until Saturday, we had all of Friday to get a look at the course and the city. The course was actually one of the nicer ones I've raced on this year. Since a hill in Kentucky doesn't quite compare to a hill in the mountain region, there wasn't anything big, and the course was at sea level so recovering from the quicker race pace was less of a challenge. Myself and a few teammates had our own little adventure after the course preview when we needed to add on mileage and somehow found ourselves off the path in the middle of the forest. We had to battle through a few thorns and hop a few fences, but it made for a pretty good story to tell the rest of the team when we got back. We also got the opportunity to do some touristy stuff in downtown Louisville Friday afternoon. I think the highlight of that was finding one street that had three wig shops within a block and wondering how high the demand for wigs in that area must be to justify it.
Saturday morning, we woke up to perfect racing conditions. It was about 48 degrees and sunny when we arrived at the course, and it warmed up just slightly before we raced. This race was a very different experience, even from national caliber races in high school. From the time I started off the line to the time I crossed the finish, I was in a massive unbroken pack. I'm used to races separating out at least a little over the first few miles, but this one remained incredibly crowded. It really helped to be racing with so many other girls because though the pace was pretty quick, it felt easier to be surrounded by other people and have others ahead to focus on and try to catch. The increased volume of the workouts I've been doing in college also seems to have helped, because the additional 1k did not feel like much of a difference. I ended up crossing the line in 73rd with a time of 20:58, which I was pretty happy with. I'm definitely going to try and focus more on certain teams to catch at conference, since I wasn't able to pick them out in a race this size, and I'd like to keep improving on my time, but this was a pretty good start to racing on a higher level.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Thursday, October 8, 2015
University of Montana Invitational
Before I share the recap from my most recent race, here's a link to an athletic profile by the MSU Exponent that perfectly captures my relationship with food and running.
This past weekend marked my first away meet with the new team. Since it's only a few hours to Missoula, we took the school's vans and rolled up like basically the swaggiest cross country crew of all time. We got some aggressively pink shirts to wear to the course previews for the month of October to show our support for the fight against breast cancer, which is pretty awesome, and of course only enhanced our coolness factor on arrival.
The course itself was really nice. It was on a golf course, so it was relatively flat and well-groomed. It had a slight incline for parts of the first and last mile, and one gnarly hill at just over halfway. Overall it wasn't bad at all.
We woke up to perfect conditions on race day. It had been raining during the night, and it was just slightly overcast during the women's race. The pace for the first mile was probably a bit on the quick side-no one actually read off the splits for me, but a teammate told me that she had come through around 5:37. A girl from University of Idaho led the race from the gun, and from the end of the first mile on, I settled in and tried to close the gap to her. The hill took quite a bit out of me on the way up, but from there on out, most of the race was on a downhill incline, so I was still able to finish reasonably well with a 5k time of about 17:59. My team ended up winning on both the men's and women's side, so it was a great first travel trip.
This past weekend marked my first away meet with the new team. Since it's only a few hours to Missoula, we took the school's vans and rolled up like basically the swaggiest cross country crew of all time. We got some aggressively pink shirts to wear to the course previews for the month of October to show our support for the fight against breast cancer, which is pretty awesome, and of course only enhanced our coolness factor on arrival.
The course itself was really nice. It was on a golf course, so it was relatively flat and well-groomed. It had a slight incline for parts of the first and last mile, and one gnarly hill at just over halfway. Overall it wasn't bad at all.
We woke up to perfect conditions on race day. It had been raining during the night, and it was just slightly overcast during the women's race. The pace for the first mile was probably a bit on the quick side-no one actually read off the splits for me, but a teammate told me that she had come through around 5:37. A girl from University of Idaho led the race from the gun, and from the end of the first mile on, I settled in and tried to close the gap to her. The hill took quite a bit out of me on the way up, but from there on out, most of the race was on a downhill incline, so I was still able to finish reasonably well with a 5k time of about 17:59. My team ended up winning on both the men's and women's side, so it was a great first travel trip.
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