Sophomore Season Recap

Thanksgiving is tomorrow which means two things:  First, I will be getting diabetes and probably heart disease #sorrycoach, and second, cross country is officially over.  While this is wonderful news because it means that it's time to play track now, it's also a little difficult to see my second cross season end.  I'm one of the strange breed of collegiates who actually genuinely enjoys cross country, and especially the way this season ended, it was hard to let it go. 
Coming into this season, I obviously had some big goals.  I put in a very hard summer, upping both my mileage and the intensity of my training, so I was ready to do some damage on the cross course.  My fitness was definitely the best it's ever been, and I fully expected to break all of my personal records, as well as place in the top three at conference and qualify for nationals.  Unfortunately, things don't always go as we would like them to.  Throughout the season, my races were consistently decent, but I never had the breakthrough that I was expecting.  There were several small issues that impacted my performance the first few races, but I was hoping to see the results of my effort at the championship meets at the end of the season.  Alas, my hamstrings did not have the same plan in mind.  Just as it did last year at this time, my left hamstring decided to sabotage me a few days before the conference meet.  I ended up being unable to do anything but easy run in the two weeks between conference and regionals, so though I felt well rested, my legs were highly uncooperative when the idea of running fast was presented to them.  I finished better than I did last year at both conference and region, but nowhere close to where I feel I was capable of.

Teamwork makes the dream work #rule3

So, where do I go from here?  Exactly where I planned to before this season.  A few setbacks are to be expected in every athlete's career.  I've started rehab to #savethehammy2k16 so that I never have to deal with this particular setback again, and I am 100% dedicated to meeting my goals during track.  I still have an amazing and supportive team, and a coaching staff that is willing to work with me moving forward.  We have made plans to individualize my training a bit more in the future to work on improving my anaerobic capacity in such a way that it will not put too much strain on my weak bb hamstrings and focus in more on the true distance events.  Coming at you, 5k/10k double.  Also, I get to up my mileage again over winter break which I am TOO excited about.  Seventy miles a week=seventy excuses a week to eat more holiday snacks and buy more running shoes on Black Friday.   

It took the whole season, but we finally got the bun hugger booty pop down