Pre-Nationals

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.