View Workout (Brandon Hahn)

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Nationals

November 19, 2011 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
25:27 (4:52,10:06,15:17,20:27). Last race of my collegiate career. The morning leading up to the race I was a little nervous, but mostly excited. I was disappointed that my career was ending, but that can't be helped so it was not a big distraction. I mean, there's not many better ways to go out than at nats, so I guess I have that going for me.

5 minutes before the start, Dale and Natedog came running down the starting fairway towards us in our box. Normally I would be annoyed at the distraction, but today was different. It was awesome to see them slip past security and make it into the starting area. They were very enthused and it certainly rubbed off on us. In the huddle with Bobby, we chanted "Pound Town" before the normal "Hop on Three" part, so that was neat too. The rest of the guys seemed to be feeling similarly to me, which is to say nervous but also excited. I realized that there was nothing I would rather be doing at that moment than racing at the national championship with my teammates, and that definitely helped motivate me too.

Right before the gun went off, out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy false start. They fired the gun and everyone went, but they called it back after maybe 5 seconds. That was not a big deal, because it was nothing more than a hard strider. Once we started for real, I made sure to get out hard, then tried to have us settle in. A bunch of guys closed in from our left though, so we had to pick it up again briefly. At the ~400m I was in solid position and ready to stay there. I spent the next mile or so jostling for position with everyone else. The race is so crazy because it's literally a giant mob moving at 4:50 pace that is like 6-7 people wide. There is really no chance to move around too much, and it's all you can do to avoid getting knocked over. Anyway, came through the mile in 4:52 and felt mildly tired, but with no hills it's not that bad of a pace.

In the second mile is where I made my biggest mistake. I wanted to ensure that I had enough left for a move in the last 2 miles, so I settled in during miles 2 and 3. I moved from 100th in the race to about 145th by the 2nd mile, but it didn't seem like so many people had passed me (probably because the race was still a huge mass). There were a couple times that I felt like I could have picked it up slightly (maybe totaling 10 seconds faster over the mile), but I did NOT take those opportunities. During the third mile I picked it up a little, and the race had almost thinned out slightly. Sometime around here 2 dickinson guys came up on me, and I started running with them. It was pretty cool because it was like having an ally out there (besides my team of course). Brett said that during the race some of the dickinson guys passed him and budman at one point and were like, "Let's go hop!" which again is pretty cool. I would have been willing to work with anyone in our region who was there except etown cuz fuck those guys. But yeah I ran with Mynatt and Steinbock for a couple miles, until sometime in the fourth mile when we really started dropping the pace. There was a little over a mile left at this point. I kept passing people throughout the last mile, but the dickinson guys passed me in the last k or so. As I came into the last stretch with ~300 to go, I just let go and left everything out there. I recall passing an etown kid and almost catching allegheny's third guy, who beat me pretty well the week before. I finished and barely felt like I had control of myself over the last 100m.

Then it was all over, and I kind of sat on the ground for a while just thinking about how everything was over. The guys had some nice things to say to me, which I appreciated.

We cooled down with Tiny Dancer of swat, which was neat. He's a nice guy. After we got back to the tent where our stuff was, I took off my singlet and realized it would be the last time I ever wore my Hopkins singlet. That really hit home for me and made me think about impeding (second) graduation and how I'll be leaving in less than a month. But that's for another log entry.

I was satisfied, but not particularly pleased with this race. I followed the race plan pretty well, but I let my best possible race get away from me by voluntarily wussing out for 1.5 miles. I think I could have done maybe 15 seconds faster at best, but in the big picture it's not so bad. That would have put me in the top 80 or so, which again, would have been nice, but I'm not going to be all upset about it. In a couple years I won't remember whether I finished 127th or 1027th (there were only 280 people in the race, btw). Having a slightly faster 8k PR is not that important to me because times don't matter in xc anyway. C'est la vie.

After looking at the results a little bit more, I'm slightly happier with my performance. At nats it seems like a lot of people either run a good race or a really bad race. So I think that running a pretty standard race is a success in a way, if only because it seems like avoiding a big failure is one of the main goals. I realize this sounds kind of weird, but (not trying to be elitist here) until you've run nationals, you can't really understand what the dynamic of the race is like completely. It's unlike any other cross race I've ever seen. For a majority of the race, there were 3 people finishing every second, which is crazy. A slightly better race can produce a place which is significantly better. All this being said, I still think I left a better race out there, and that's a little frustrating. Again, not a huge deal though.

The team did about as well as I expected. I think with everyone having a slightly better race we could have been like 20-22, but I recognize that we are new at this nats business and that the season focus was on regionals, so I have nothing bad to say about how we did. I'm very proud of the whole team this season, and I wouldn't want anyone to think differently based on what I said above. I should point out that I certainly include myself in the "could have done a little better" group.

Well, that's it for my racing log I guess. If anyone's still reading this, stay tuned for season/career reflections at some point in the near future.