Concord-Carlisle Meet

The meet against a massive D1 school was a serious loss for most of the team. Then again, they are D1 with some of the best runners in the whole country so it surprised nobody that they beat us by double digits. Due to constant renovation of the school and the track, it was the first time since my freshman year that I had been to this track. The actual track itself had a good feel to it. It was a new compact rubber track with a light bounce to it. I was hoping to use the good track during the race to compensate for the heat and strong winds. During warm ups I was approached by several CC runners, all of whom called me by name, to my surprise. It was actually pretty flattering to be known by the school with the #1 track team in the DCL. The CC track team always starts out pretty average as freshman; typically a time of 18:30 ish for a 5k and a 5:20 ish for a mile. Much better than I was as a freshman, but stunning that these were CC kids that I could run better than as a sophomore. But out of no where, they come back as incredible sophomores. They typically will now finish a 5k in sub-17 and usually around  a 4:40 ish for a mile. This is what scared me about running with a lot of people I remember from last year, especially now that Tyler was in it, but after strides and a lot of water I just wanted to get the race through and quick with at least a sub-5:10. At the very start of the race I found myself getting elbowed repeatedly, so I sped up ahead of the pack to avoid them. But this was unfortunate because going out too fast made the second lap especially difficult. Luckily the second lap is always the lap to conserve, even though it is hard to hold a pace when people go ahead of you and your natural instinct would be to speed up. But the third lap is where I started building up speed and began passing many CC runners. By the fourth lap I was going all out, breathing hard through my nose, and eventually was able to pass Christopher Ratcliffe, the younger brother of the legendary Thomas Ratcliffe. Then again, Chris Ratcliffe is a freshman, so I never had an excuse to finish behind him. The top time in the race was a 4:49 by one of the sophomores, and Tyler ended up breaking 5 for the second time. I was happy to learn I had clocked in a 5:03, though I was still disappointed to be the only runner in the top 4 to not break 5:00 that day. About 30 minutes after the race my coach had Tyler and I go on a, get this, 20 minute cool-down run. The problem with Tyler is that he treats every run like a Kenyan run, progressively getting faster until we were going at race pace. I survived, but just barely. I did not see us win any other running events besides a couple of sprint relays that were able to edge out CC. So it was no surprise that the next day out coach said we had been brutally massacred by them. Not the best day for the team as a whole, but overall, I'd say personally that my day could have been a lot worse.