Pre-Nationals

As of Saturday, the early season is officially over and championship season is upon us.  With Wisco on Friday and pre-nats on Saturday, this was a huge weekend for all of cross country, and an opportunity for teams to prove themselves.  Utah State went to pre-nats rather than Wisconsin so that everyone on the team would be somewhat familiar with the course before nationals, and we would have a chance to compete against a large group of nationally ranked teams.
This time around, our first travel day was much less hectic.  We actually got our rental cars in a reasonable time frame, nobody got left anywhere, and we got our run in before dark, although I'm entirely convinced that the place we did our post-plane shakeout was 100% haunted.  It was called Big Bone Lick Park, and everything about the situation was reminiscent of a horror film.  It all got started when our vans got split up and we couldn't find half of our group, then when we tried to call them, we found that there was no cell service in the park.  Fortunately, there were a very limited number of places to turn off, so we quickly found them less than half a mile away.  Just so you can all appreciate how clearly haunted this area was, I'll describe it to you in unnecessary amounts of detail.  The place we parked was a "picnic area" which consisted of a swing set, some slides, a run down picnic bench under a tree, and a covered picnic area with bathrooms attached.  The ground was marshy, probably with several dead bodies just below the surface, and to the left, there was a meadow with what looked like a run-down set of wooden bleachers and a rusted out fence that were once part of a baseball field.  I was absolutely certain that the tap water in the bathroom was pumped out of the marshes around us, and that I probably got some angry spirits on my skin when I washed my hands.  The entire area was overcast, which could've just been a weather thing, but more likely was a large group of souls trapped eternally in that area thing.  Coach had planned out a loop for us to run, and with about two miles to go, we found ourselves on the far side of a lake, with me believing that the vans were at least fifteen miles away and that we were going to get crazy murdered by the locals.  Seriously, it's the eve of Friday the 13th, it's overcast, we're running down back roads on the shore of a lake, and there are tiny lake houses and random campers on either side of the road.  Try and tell me that doesn't sound like a setup for a horror film.  Also, earlier in the week I talked to Sonia about the fact that every time I eat peanut butter, I get wildly nauseated and feel like I'm dying, so she suggested that I maybe not eat peanut butter so much anymore, so naturally I had a peanut butter sandwich and multiple peanut butter bars on the plane and spent the entire run convinced that I was going to die.  So things were going great.
The morning of the course preview, after having flung all of my possessions across the hotel room after promising myself that I would stay neat and contained on this trip, I realized that I somehow lost one of my racing socks.  I definitely had other socks that I could have raced in, but I am very particular about what goes on my feet when I'm racing, and without my ultra-lite no-show tabbed Feetures, there was no way that I would be lining up to race the next day.  I probably would've just flown back to Utah that night.  Okay, maybe not.  But I wouldn't have been happy.  Fortunately, I have the greatest coaches on earth, so after the course preview-which was absolutely fantastic, the amount of love this team has for each other and enthusiasm we have to race and race well for each other is like nothing I have ever experienced with any other team-Sarah drove me to a local running store where I got the very last pair of size medium ultra-lite no-show Feetures that they had, which were an extremely aggressive neon orange.

Photos courtesy of Michael Scott

The race itself was different from the first three I ran this year, for obvious reasons.  This race had a significantly stronger field, so it got out hard from the gun and never really offered an opportunity to settle in.  Going into this race, the plan was to go out close to the top ten, cover any gaps that opened up, and move up the last 2k.  Because of the sheer size of the race, this wasn't quite as easy as I anticipated it being, simply because so many girls surged for the front from the beginning.  Mentally, it was a bit challenging to have to work around other runners to be close to the front and run in the middle of a large pack rather than frontrunning easy.  I'm definitely grateful that we had the chance to race here before nationals and I could get some experience running a race that size, because there are some factors here and there that I need to improve on when running with such a large, talented group, and now I know what to change and have time to change it.  I ended up finishing ninth, and I feel extremely conflicted about it.  Last year, my goal was to crack the top thirty in this race, and I fell far short of it, so this year was a huge improvement, but I still feel that I didn't race as well as I could've, with the heat and the race size influencing my performance more than I would've liked, so right now I think I'm happy with the race, but not satisfied.  There is still over a month until nationals, though, so I think that's a good place to be going into the sharpening phase for championship season.

On that pain train for the team

The team finish was the real highlight of that day.  Our women worked together and showed up to prove that we deserve to be nationally ranked.  We placed fourth, beating the #4 ranked team in the nation to do so and only placing behind #1, 2, and 9 ranked teams.  A text post can't really convey how exciting that is.  FOURTH PLACE AT PRE-NATIONALS.  BEHIND ONLY TOP-10 RANKED TEAMS.  IN FRONT OF #4.  It's a pretty dang big deal.  We established pretty clearly that we are certainly the best women's team in Utah, and that there are few teams in the region or nation that we can't at least hold our own against.  Guys, I'm pumped.  My heart is racing a little just typing this up because we still have a month before the regional meet and we aren't going to back off.  We are ready to be the first USU team to go to nationals, and we are going to show up to regionals even more fit and sharp than we are now.    Both the men and the women have been making sacrifices and doing more for this team than we ever have before.  We are willing to do whatever it takes.  Seriously, whatever it takes-we've got the EPO in the fridge in our training room ready to inject right before regionals.  Just kidding, I promise we aren't doping, we just have some kick-ass coaches and a love for each other that drives us to train and race for something bigger than ourselves.

  

On the Rise

I am so hyped I don't even know where to begin.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the team competed in the Paul Short Invite in Pennsylvania this last weekend, and boy did we show up on race day.  The entirety of the weekend was an adventure, so I won't skip straight to the running stuff and leave you wondering just how long we waited for our rental cars or how many times we listened to Welcome to New York by T-Swift on the way to the city.
Leading up to race day, we had a few hiccups.  I hyperventilated my way through the flight and only teared up once or twice, so we were off to a great start.  Then, upon arriving in Pennsylvania, we learned that two of the drivers we had planned on were not, in fact, old enough for the rental agencies to trust them with their vehicles.  We were at the airport for about an hour and a half while that got sorted out, and ended up finagling our way into the cars anyway.  By the time we reached our hotel, it was dark and we had yet to run.  Since coach was a little wary of letting loose twenty-two wide-eyed country kids from Utah to run through the streets of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, we rolled out to the course for a little late night course previewing.  If you've never run alone through Pennsylvania cornfields in the dark, let me just tell you right now, you aren't missing out.  If there was a Yelp page for it, I would rate it zero stars.  In the daylight hours, I am a semi-rational and somewhat reasonable young lady.  After the sun goes down, it's a completely different story.  I kept seeing shapes in the cornfields, and at one point I actually thought to myself, "Oh no, it's the fabled Pennsylvania werewolves.  My life is about to end."  It wasn't even a full moon.  A few rabbits darted out over the course, and I sincerely believed they were serial killers rustling around in the corn waiting for unsuspecting runners to prey upon.  I think it's possible that I watch too many true crime shows.  Probably the greatest tragedy of the day came about later that night, though, when Presli and I ordered peanut butter chocolate silk pie and they had the audacity to bring us regular chocolate silk pie.  The nerve of some people.

The following day we had the course preview and the difference between the course at night and the course during the day was startling.  Suddenly it no longer felt like the world was closing in every time we ran through the corn, and there wasn't a sense of impending doom.  (Well, not as much of a sense of impending doom-it was a pre-race run, after all).  Probably the most important takeaway from the course preview was Jos telling us that her mom could run 1200 meters when we hit the three mile mark, so we definitely could as well.  A little bit of magic occurred out on the course that transformed my legs from feeling like those bags of frosting you use to decorate cakes to feeling like legs that belonged to a real human person again.

The race itself was a happening good time.  Before the women lined up, two of our male counterparts won their respective races, and it was looking like the men's team would take the title for their race, so Utah State was getting some side glances from the crowd.  Getting out in a field of 400+ ladies wasn't as terrifying and PTSD-inducing as I anticipated it being.  Probably the biggest issue I faced during the race was that I forgot to make note of the distances during the course preview and I somehow didn't notice the signs off to the side that clearly stated how far you have gone every 1k and mile so we got to the three mile and I was still laboring under the delusion that we had not yet hit two miles.  Boy did I feel silly.  With 1200 meters to go, I reminded myself that a) my teammates were out there grinding as well, and we all needed each other to be successful and b) Josie's mom can ran 1200 meters, so you'd best believe I could put in just a little bit more effort.  We ended up coming away with three individual wins, and a sweep of the team titles on the men's and women's side.  I don't think I have ever seen such a group of rowdy individuals as my teammates when we got the news that we had beat number 15-ranked Villanova by over 40 points.

Also, because I mentioned in my previous post that we would be going to a Broadway show in New York, I feel obligated to tell you all about that experience.  Believe it or not, New York is vastly different from Logan, Utah.  There are a few more people, and they are not quite as happy to see you.  Times Square and Broadway were amazing (Phantom on Broadway was probably the coolest thing I have ever seen), and I would definitely like to marry into money so I can go back and watch Broadway musicals casually on the weekends, but New York is not a place that I would ever want to stay for extended periods of time.  On the way back, we learned that the train back from the city is equipped with doors that close automatically, whether everyone who wants to get off is off or not when we managed to lose two of our teammates and our trainer.  They did eventually make their way back to the hotel, though, despite my sincere concern that they would disappear into the train tunnels and become mole people, never to be seen by us again.

In other news, since starting this post, the national coaches' poll has come out, as have the various national rankings from different running-central websites.  The coaches' poll has the women ranked 19th, and the men coming in at 27th.  This is the first time in the history of the school that both the men's and women's teams have been ranked at the same time, and I really can't express what an exciting time it is to be at USU.  We are all still very motivated to keep moving up, and are not willing to let ourselves be complacent or settle in at all, but we're also extremely happy to have reached the point that we have.  Our next competition will be next Saturday in Louisville at pre-nats, and we're definitely ready to move up a few more places in the rankings.  (No I'm not bitter that Villanova and BYU are still ranked ahead of us.  Okay, yeah, I'm totally bitter.  Sorry about it.)    

Got some prom photos done while I had my corn bouquet, courtesy of my teammates