More Than Breath

I started my last cross country post with a quote. I have another quote that encompasses my focus for this season of track.

It's a concept I've been trying to master for about a year. I can't say I have yet, but I got just a little taste of it this season. That is, experiencing pain and not caring because I wanted something else even more than comfort.

At the beginning of the year, I made goals for myself. A 1:09 400m, 2:39 800m and a 5:59 1600 (roughly a mile). Which ones did I accomplish? Well, let's see.

The season unofficially started earlier than usual for me. I did an indoor track camp for 6 weeks at the beginning of the year at a local community college. I had never run on an indoor track and even after this experience, I can't say I love running inside on a tiny track where the air is dry. But I still had a blast, learned a lot and met some cool people including Maurice Mitchell, semi-finalist 200 sprinter in the 2012 Olympics. He was the sprinting coach so I didn't hang out with him much but he lead the warm ups and signed my shoe. Oh, and we had matching Nike watches.

Even though he isn't famous, the distance coach, Chris, was an amazing coach. He never failed to have a solid workout for us and even better, he ran them with us. My favorite days were Turnover Thursdays aka speed days. We did fun but exhausting workouts like three man relays. The camp was over all too soon but it was certainly worth my time and money. It gave me a prepared edge going into the outdoor season.

I also had the opportunity to go to MU for an indoor meet. Quite honestly, I felt really rusty. Getting back into the track meet groove isn't the easiest thing in the world. But on top of that, indoor tracks are almost always 200m rather than 400m. This makes racing different because there are twice as many laps and the curves are tighter. In any case, I ran a 2:59 800 which scared me because, even tho I knew I was out of shape, I didn't know I was THAT out of shape. On the other hand, I made a massive PR of 6:21 in the 1600. I knew that my mile time had drastically changed when I started running 6:30 first miles in my cross country races a few months before. This was all foreshadowing to the fact that the 1600 was about to become my new focus rather than the 800 like last year. I also ran the 3200 just because I could. It was horrible. Just...bad. We'll leave it at that.

A note on shoes: New Balance RC1400's have been my very most favorite running shoe I've ever found--enough to buy another pair for this season. This is a comparison to the old and new. You can tell which one went through a muddy season of cross country. Also, that's Maurice's signature on the dirty shoe.

Outdoor season wouldn't come fast enough. And it passed much too fast.

Welcome to track life, folks!

The first meet was a practice meet with just two other teams. Nothing counted; it was just for evaluation and new people to see how it works. I had requested to be added to the 1600 but I don't think my coach thought much of it...until I crossed the finish line second and first on the team, with a new PR of 6:12. I think he was pleasantly surprised. But now I knew I was locked into this race and could not disappoint from now on. The rest of my races I finished in my normal average times. Again, another foreshadowing of my season to come.

 Meet 2 was cold. Too cold. Plus it was a 300m track. Boy, does that mess a runner up. I ran half decent times but no PR's.

Number 3 was another pretty average meet of not PRing or doing that well in general. We all have those days, right?

Number 4 on the other hand went very well. My 4x800 team ran well with me also PRing in my leg. I ran close to my PR in the 1600, and I also ran my fastest 400 of the year in the 4x400. I lead off the 4x4 as usual. The unusual part was that I started the race off in the same lane as another girl which never happens when running the 400. It's a lanes all the way race which means you have your own lane the whole way. But because of the circumstances, the race officials had to improvise. There were 5 teams and only 4 lanes (this was an exceptionally small track). Instead of splitting us up into heats, they decided to put me and another girl together to battle it out in the outside lane. Because I'm a pretty slow 400 runner, I immediately let her take the lead, not wanting to create too much trouble. But half way around the track, I realized that I was keeping up with her just fine. In fact, I still had plenty of energy which is not normal for me at this point in the race. As we rounded the curve, I decided to take my chances and pass her. After a few seconds, I was a stride ahead of her and pulling out. I passed the baton to my teammate and peeled off the track. At that point, I realized I also hadn't been passed by anyone else which meant I had put my team in first right off! It didn't stay that way, but we still came close to our team record (we might have broken it but I'm not sure). When I asked my coach for my split, I didn't care about what place we were in because I had run 7 seconds faster than any of my other 400s so far that season, tying it with my 400 PR last season. I really have no idea what got into me that night to make me run like that.

Meet 5 was dark and drizzly and also disappointing for me personally. My coach decided to make it unofficially a JV meet for our team because it was limited entry. As a result, I only got put in the 4x800 to give other people a chance to do some events. My goal was to make the best of it and break 2:40. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling it that day. My legs were tight and felt heavy. Despite my best effort, I came up just short of my goal. As much as I wanted to be down in the dumps because this disappointment, I couldn't help but have fun for the rest of the meet because, hey! I didn't have any more races to worry about so I could just mess around, take silly pictures and cheer my friends on without a care.

Homeschool State started out a bit stormy so it was pushed back a few hours. My friend and I went down the street to Wendy's and got lunch while we were waiting. Finally the clouds cleared and the meet got started. I PRed in the mile but we had no competition in the 4x800 and 4x400 which made it disappointing because that meant I really only competed in one event.

Number 7 was hot. Hot hot hot. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the day, let alone do well. I ran my leg of the 4x800 and did pretty well along with my 4x400 leg. But I ran the 1600 with great gusto and PRed. At least according to my watch, coaches watch, another spectators watch and the person standing at the finish line calling out rough times... Oh, but the timing system was having issues and they gave me the time of the person behind me. This did not make me happy at all but I am still going to go with 6:04 (which put me as the team record holder) rather than the "official" 6:12. I wasn't the only one with a wrong time in that race nor many of the other races. It was a miserable day but the PR kept me cool.

The last meet was Homeschool Nationals, a two day event. I was signed up to do the 3200 on day one which I was almost excited about because coach wanted me to pace the top 3200 girl on the team in the first mile of the race. Unfortunately, I felt an injury coming on and decided to scratch it to save myself for my events the next day. Instead, I got to be coaches assistant with a walkie-talkie at the 200 mark and coach people along in their races. Later on, a group of us crazy teenagers decided to go on an adventure by foot to find the Subway down the street for dinner. We went a roundabout way, winding through neighborhoods and one of the boys lost his phone along the way. That took us a while to find in the dark but it was found so it's all good. We also made it to subway eventually so we didn't starve.

The next day was my day--my last chance this year to hit my goals. I started out feeling good about it. But then I ran the 4x800 only to find that I ran an average time even though I thought I had ran harder than that. Shot one to my confidence. A few hours later, I ran the open 800 which I ran at my worst time of this outdoor season. Shot two to my confidence. Then the heat of the day kicked in. Shot three to my confidence. I had a few hours to sit there and think of my fate. With the way I was running so far, how in the world was I going to do any good in the 1600? In this heat no less. Then I thought back to the week before when I had PRed in the blistering heat. It never happens that way but that day it did. I could do it again. Yes. Yes, I would do it again. This was the last chance to break 6 minutes. I had to give it my all. I would never forgive myself if I didn't. With a few hours to go, my parents offered to take me to Bass Pro down the street to go look around and cool off.

When I got back, there was about an hour left to wait. While I was gone, people had found that it was much cooler under the bleachers so that's where I sat while I waited for my fate. They finally called the 1600 and I groaned. Why couldn't I be a sprinter that didn't care what the weather was? I went down into the heat to wait a little longer until my age group ran. I remembered the pep talk I had given myself as I walked onto the track. I could do this.
It wasn't long before everything hurt. My lungs burned from lack of oxygen and my legs were on fire, not wanting to go any faster. As I finished the first 800, my split was called out and I knew I had to pick it up or else I wasn't going to get my goal. On the last lap, a teammate passed me. No. No this couldn't happen. I passed her again but she kept right on my tail. I told my legs to go faster. The pain would be over soon. Less than a lap to go. Go, go, go. A few meters from the finish line, she passed me again. My heart sank. I tried to go faster but to no avail. I finished a second or two behind her. I also knew I hadn't met my goal of breaking 6 minutes. My heart was shattered as I staggered to the side, moaning loudly. I didn't care who heard me. I had run harder than I had ever run and I hadn't done it. The situation got worse as I learned that I hadn't even PRed (second best time tho) and my teammate had taken the team record from me by less than a second. The only thing that kept me going was knowing I had tried my hardest. I had never before run with that much determination. To know that I could want winning (meeting my goal in this case) more than anything was reassuring. If I can just take this mindset into my future seasons, I can go places.
After all that, I still had one more race. The 4x400. I knew this wasn't going to go well. 3 of the 4 people on the relay team had also just finished the 1600. Lo and behold, I ran a sluggish 400 and we didn't do too well. I was dead. I had no kick left in my legs. What a disappointing ending to the season. I tromped up the bleachers to where my stuff was. Half way up, I remembered something. SUGAR! I ran up that thing in nothing flat and dove into my bag to find my saved cookie. I had done a sugar fast for the entire season again so the thought of being able to eat sugar once again brightened my day right up. The sweetness filled my mouth and all my disappointment melted away. It hadn't been thaaaat bad of a day.
So which goals did I hit? None of them. Not one. I didn't even come close in the 400 and 800. But I still got something: the knowledge that I can push myself harder than I thought. And that's exactly what I'm going to do in my upcoming and last year of high school running. I finished the season with a PR of 6:04 in the 1600. Much better than I would have ever dreamed of before the season began. I also placed in the top 6 of every race I was in so you know what? It was a successful season despite not quite meeting my lofty goals.

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I didn't want to clutter the main part of the post with a bunch of pictures but there are a lot more that I like so here they are for anyone interested. I narrowed them down a lot but there are still quite a few.

My awesome team!

 Spring sports banquet.

 Lotsa Running

Coach is always watching...

Relays

Helping with Blocks

Silly Pictures

Celebrate! We don't have to run the 3200!

Some meets were cold.

Although I didn't take most of the pictures in this post, I still took a lot of my teammates.

I didn't do some big video production this year but I took the best of the pictures posted on Facebook and put silly captions on them. Enjoy the slideshow.

https://picasaweb.google.com/100916094605592356933/TrackCaptions2014?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJG2m9Oz2LSaFg&feat=directlink