Big Sky Indoor Championships/Indoor Season 2k17

Man, what a difference one season can make.  When I opened my second indoor season, frankly it was a fiasco.  I arrived back in Bozeman after a month at home the night before classes started and two days before the first home meet.  The following morning, I felt a little under the weather, but I chalked it up to being worn out from the stressful journey from Utah that had changed from a six hour scenic drive to a ten hour snow-induced nightmare, so I proceeded to do my morning run as usual.  By the time I got to my first class, I had a splitting headache and a slight fever.  I spent the next day in bed with the flu and a fever, but determined that I would still be totally fine to race that Friday.  When Friday came, I made a valiant attempt to race the 5k, but ended up dropping out of a race for the first time in my life with over a mile to go.  A few days later after a visit to the student health clinic, I was informed that I had the flu, and as a result, my breathing was only at about 70% of what it should be, and that I shouldn't expect to feel completely better for at least two weeks after the period I initially started feeling sick.  I spent the next week wheezing my way through easy runs, and didn't even attempt to race again for three weeks, briefly even considering taking the rest of the season completely off from competing.
My first race back was nothing to write home about.  It was my first time racing the 5k indoor, having focused on the mile and 3k my first year, and though nothing went noticeably wrong, my time was nowhere near where I felt it should have been (Actually, it was significantly slower than the time I ran in time trials on a dirt course before the cross country season started) and I still didn't feel much like myself.  I was incredibly frustrated, especially because my workouts indicated that I should have been significantly faster.  I was plagued with doubts about whether the training I put in over the summer and the big jump I had made again over winter break would really pay off or not.  The following week however, things started to get back on track.  A Wednesday morning workout went much better than I had anticipated, and my second 5k in Poctello that weekend cut 24 seconds off of the converted time I posted just one week earlier, putting me only three seconds behind my all-time personal best.  The next weekend, I raced the 3k and finished just two seconds behind my converted personal best, giving me some hope that I would be back and functional enough to race my best for the conference meet.
My last pre-conference workout definitely had me feeling like myself again, and I went into my first race of the weekend calm and confident like I haven't been since cross country season began.  I ended up earning my first all-conference honors with a third place finish in the 5k, getting a 22 second indoor personal best and a 19 second overall personal best, and blacking out on the track immediately after.  Racing the 5k indoors is an entirely different beast than running it outdoors.  Somehow those 25 laps, though they come out to the exact same distance as the 12.5 on an outdoor track, manage to feel substantially longer, and since I focused on the mile/3k indoors last year, coming through the 3k and realizing I still had a full ten laps to go was quite a shock to the system the first few times I raced it.  (Actually, I've only raced the 5k indoors a grand total of three times, so I have to admit it's still a shock to the system).  The following day was when I got to experience some of the rewards of the fitness I worked for over the summer and winter break.  Changing my mileage from 50 a week to 70 a week over the course of the year didn't feel like such a huge difference until the day after the 5k when I lined up for the 3k feeling as fresh as daisy.  I ended up doubling back with a second place finish in that, and an eleven second personal best.  I finished the conference weekend finally feeling like I was seeing some of the breakthrough I had been anticipating since last summer, though I still have a long way to go before I reach my goals.

#DramaQueen #WhenYouSeeYourGPA

Now that indoor is officially over for my team, we have already set our sights on outdoor.  Immediately upon arriving in Bozeman, my teammates Weezy and Andrew joined me for a late-night run to herald the arrival of the outdoor season.  This week I'm back up at seventy miles after a short taper pre-conference, and holy cats ya girl could use a nap and some dessert.  (Seriously, if you make dessert anytime soon and have extras, hit me up for my address and send it my way).  But when it comes down to it, I love running so the effort will always be worth it for the opportunity to continue improving and chasing my goals.  This outdoor season, I am planning on seriously competing in the 10k for the first time and aiming for a 34 minute converted time, which will ideally be enough to take me to the national meet.  I am also shooting for a sub-16:30 5k, which would be good enough for a Montana State school record and another step in the journey towards that sub-16 5k, which is strange to say considering that my freshman year of high school, all I really wanted was to go sub-20 during the cross season.  But hey, always gotta stay chasing improvement.