View Workout (Jake Avery)

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STACS

October 31, 2015 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Got to the meet and it was cold. Not as cold as regionals last year but much colder than I was used to so we layered up. I liked that we didn't have much time until we had to race because it made it so that we wouldn't really think about the race. Ran the course and I really liked it especially the back stretches. There were like no hills and the artificial hill felt like nothing. Simon wasn't feeling well on the warmup and Derran was way far behind for the course run but I guess that's how he normally runs. I noticed that in the course are a ton of places where you could fall asleep so I knew I had to make sure not to. We got back to the tent and we only had about 30 mins of downtime until we had to warmup which was a good thing. I mostly stayed on my feet for this time. Then we went on a little warmup which was shortened because we just warmed up a little bit ago. We just went out to the railroad then back the way we came with a loop by the busses. We got back snagged our spike and headed to the line. There was a little confusion whether or not cornings top guys were running their top guys but I just told a few of the guys it doesn't matter who they run we will still be going out hardest. We did our 2 min tempo and kept it much more controlled. It felt good to me and that we were keeping it easy. Did some drills and strides then we ready to go. I wasn't nervous at all. For some reason I wasn't really even thinking about the race I just wanted to run. Right before we started I told Silas be smart. This was more a way of me telling myself because if I tell someone else it sinks into me more. The race started and I didn't think at all about where anyone else was besides myself. I had to force myself to stay back a little and keep it controlled but my brain wanted me to be up with the leaders. One point I started thinking about other things but I told my mind to stay focused and hungry. Another big thing that happened during the race was that I didn't think about my arm form sometimes I just overthink it when it's good. After the first 600-800 I already moved to the back of the front pack. From pics after the race I could see that the rest of our 4 man pack was right with me. That was one of my goals to go out at a pace that all of our guys could go at and move up together. A little before the hill I saw that Silas was right next to me and I was pumped, we went up the hill and it felt like nothing and Silas flew down the downhill. At this point I still felt really good this was the first mile I hardly felt any pain at all so we slowly moved up to the front pack. On the back loop it was quiet so it felt like the top guys were going so slow I could have easily picked it up here but I moved up a little just to the middle of the front pack. We came around a sharp turn and me and Neil were I think 6 and 7. Right before we got onto this bridge without even communicating me and Neil at the same time moved around the outside of the pack and cut off the from so we were 2, 3 in the race. After we did this I said "let's do it man" to Neil. In the pics I saw it looked like Silas and Ian were with us with no problem. I was still feeling great here and felt great until the 2 mile mark hardly feeling any fatigue. Me and Neil were 2 and 3 for about 1000 meters or so. After the 2 mile mark I heard Liam yell "choose a spot then go" so I thought I'm feeling good, I don't feel that challenged and what the heck so I started pushing the pace. I progressively got quicker and quicker and I was just thinking I can't lose places for the team. I was just trying to run away from the guys behind me. I didn't really care who was behind me or trying to chase me I was just running my own race. I heard coach say last "600" and thought to some of the repeats we have done so I basically started kicking from 400 out. I just didn't want to get passed I wanted to hold my spot. I created enough distance so that when I was finishing I was tying up badly I almost couldn't run. If you look at a video it looked like I was just jogging but I couldn't push my body to go any faster. I finished in second and crashed to the ground cause I was so tired they got mad at me for doing this. I didn't really care. I felt like I was actually gonna pass out. I couldn't think straight for some reason it was a very weird feeling. I was really pumped up about our teams performance though. Our top 4 all stepped it up. And I knew Ian had that performance in him all along. A 169 speed rating is crazy I was so hyped for him. Our pack running has been some of the best I've ever been a part of. I was so proud of the guys. I know Neil and Silas had to be pumped too. They had great races. We just need Cole and Ronan to step it up just a little and we will be all set. That doesn't mean they had bad races but they gotta move up and get cornings 5th guy. I was really pumped up for the rest of the day after that. I feel bad that a lot of the guys seasons are done but that's how it goes, and for Simon that could just never get it going because of injury, but I know he'll be back for track.