View Workout (Liam Albrittain)

Return to Log

CMXCIX

November 21, 2015 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: Biting cold

Comments:
After finally returning from the meet--where the spectator race added some significant mileage, I seized the opportunity to run with Nigel, doing the rather long, aerobic workout that Nick assigned me. It involved warming up for 30 minutes, running at steady state for 15 and then at tempo for 15. Without even thinking about it, however, Nigel and I immediately set off at sub-7 pace for the first mile down an arrow-straight dirt bike path with the sun setting on Lake Butte des morts, making it to the five mile mark in 32:36. He was feeling great and left me after another two miles, but I spent the rest of the run at about 6-minute pace, which only got hard during the last 10 minutes, mainly because of our eagerness early on. Still, I was in the zone--a term which has been on my mind a lot lately.

The zone is where nothing else but your next step matters, and you aren't thinking about anything but your form, your breathing, and your cadence--in other words, the act of running itself. For whatever reason, it's a place that I've found a lot more often in college than in high school, but we ALL find it at some point. I've been watching my older, better and faster teammates compete for weeks now while I bide my time training for a race that doesn't "count" that I might not even run; luckily for the nationals trip, I could completely turn off all negativity and envy that sometimes comes over us when we see others get accolades and opportunities beyond our reach, and chant "Williams!" as wholeheartedly as possible. I say all this because it's part of finding the zone. Nobody else matters there--not Pete, not Anthony, not Zeke, not Jay, not Lacey--all these important people whose external input I constantly depend upon just disappear; it's about me, my run and how for a few runs every now and then, my fitness, my enjoyment of this sport, however "good" at it I am, belong to me. And if I catch up to Nigel, or whomever, I catch up to them, and if not, it's not the end of the world. So, for all the GDS people getting ready for regionals next week, of course you should run for your team, and represent the school--all these things go without saying--but you should also find the zone.

God knows I love my team--every afternoon, every Sunday morning, every dinner, almost every weekend I'm with them. But my entire goal this season was to focus on myself, which I haven't been doing particularly well until the past three weeks; I'm working on becoming less of a head case and I suppose that starts with not thinking that my college career is over simply because I had ONE "bad" season. Even more important, if I run 18 minutes or something like that at Smith, I can't all of a sudden doubt my abilities. In a long-term sense, I'm probably tired right now, but I am following the coaches advice to take a break during exams/the worst part of the winter. We joke a lot on the guys team about "crippling self doubt" when talking to girls--the reality has sometimes been that with running, I have it. How many races have I run over the years where I could have done better if I had just stopped FREAKING OUT beforehand?

Nationals:
Women, 1st, 81 points, three all Americans--Hannah (4th), Victoria (7th), Lacey (22nd).
Men, 2nd to UW Eau-Claire 135-144, two all Americans--Bijan (3rd), Peter (13th).
Holy Toledo.

I made the drive with Cowen, Daquan, Zeke and Austin and handled surprisingly well--in part because of the knowledge that I don't have to do it twice.