Meet Day

I know that it's been a while since I last wrote here. I have had a lot of other stuff/work/family matters get in the way and I sincerely apologize to those who have been waiting. So I'm writing this response to my first meet roughly a week after it happened so apologies for a possibility of low detail count.

On the bus ride to Franklin Park, MA I was disappointed to hear that I would be put into a relay with two of the JV rookies, (who, out of respect, shall remain nameless) rather than of the teammates who I've usually beaten in the past. However, I was relieved that it was just short of a 2-mile rather than a full 5k. It was around 85 degrees during warm up and I felt myself dragging along behind the rest of the pack; my trainer sneakers might as well have had weights duct-taped to the soles. The cap-gunshot for the first leg of the relay echoed throughout the field which signaled me to head down to the starting line to stride and prepare to perform the handoff. I purposely chose shoes heavier shoes to train in because it makes striding and sprinting in spikes feel much easier. My coach called me over and told me to just "run how I feel, don't get uncomfortable, don't kill yourself; it's still early and time does not really matter yet." Eventually the officials lined all of the second-leg runners up as we waited for our first legs to finish. It seemed a whole year had gone by by the time I saw the 6 foot 3 runner with our schools black uniform with the light blonde hair and the long legs racing towards the finish. I got in position with my left foot forward and my right arm back. I grabbed the baton and shot off the starting line. Your body is trained to forget the actual "race" part of the day; all I can say is that there actually was not a certain moment where I felt "I can't go on any further" like during practice. I thought it just s happened that I was "coming back" but I new the consequences of a comfortable race once I heard that my time was 12:03, which is roughly a minute slower than my usual 2-mile split in a 5k. I probably could have gone faster if I had actually ran to the point of exhaustion like I used to. I felt that day with a sense of disappointment that it was the slowest race I had run since my freshman year but also a sense of pride that I was actually able to get through an entire race.