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"Cape Cod"

October 19, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
...which as you all know was actually a not-so-convincing effort to derail your theories that I was coming home to cheer and race today. Even with the help of two expert spies, Agent Smurph and Agent Zimmeister, most of you still figured out what I was up to and proclaimed it loudly, I'm told. Apparently posting a stock photo of Cape Cod lighthouses to Instagram was not the wisest idea - I should have consulted my Gen Z co-conspirators.

Like some of you, I managed to build up this race a little too much in my mind as THE ONE PLACE TO GET A PR which is of course not true by a long shot. Yes, it's a fast course and great opportunity, but for each of the past 3 years a handful of people have gone on to run faster times at one of the championships. The truth is in cross country, once you have at least a season under your belt and are no longer improving simply by discovering what you are capable of, you can only really compare each meet to your time in that same meet the year before, and even that is subject to weather and course conditions. Some of you got course PRs today and others of your got course PRs on other weeks. It would have been nice if this had been one of those weeks, but so it goes; there's more than one way to track your improvement.

All this is to say that I did not have the race I was hoping for, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. The fault lies largely in my own silly misalignment of priorities. Since I knew going in that this would be a good week to run a fast time, I really should have tapered and treated it almost like the end of the season. Instead, I did two hard days in a row (Tuesday and Wednesday) due to poor time management and then ran too long on Thursday when I should have taken the day off or run just a couple miles because I wanted to catch leaves. I know, I know... priorities. It's so easy to lose sight of them when you're in the midst of a run.

After a fun car ride with Mark, Ethan, and Zeke talking running for 90 minutes with a gorgeous view of the mist rising off the valley dotted by floating hilltops, we arrived in plenty of time and got in a solid course tour and warm up. I felt sufficiently energetic despite only 5 hours of sleep (Spirit Airlines is not good for sleeping), but my legs had still not shaken off Wednesday's soreness. Both the passage of time and multiple nights of good sleep are needed to clear my body of such fatigue. I scampered off to the start line in my sock feet moments before the team arrived (not quite soon enough to escape the notice of one Ruby Kaplan it seems), and put my spikes on in the last minutes before the start, forgoing striders altogether. Just before the gun went off, I thought about reviewing all the race strategies and positive thoughts that, like Abby, I'd been going off in my head for days. But instead, I decided to avoid being nervous by just smiling and staring out at the grass and letting my mind be blank.

What can I say? I had so many plans for this race and I ended up using almost none of them. I had carefully planned out how I would run each mile and in the end, I didn't even know where the mile marks were let alone my pace. I remembered sometime in mile 3 that I had wanted to be aggressive and start picking people off but then I realized I was barely holding on to the two guys I was with. Definitely not the sort of race tactics I was used to. And like Abby, I had no one I knew up ahead within sight to motivate me (though unknowingly I was providing such a service for Anthony and Myles not far behind). Seeing Charlie Barr cheering for me really helped, and I definitely spotted Oliver, maybe Litty, and Emily Scarrow. The rest of y'all were clumped up in big groups (which I might point out, is fun and social but much less effective spreading yourselves out where you each can be individually heard) so I'm sorry I couldn't recognize each of you (the one exception here is Lucy Vogt who shouted something to me about Cape Cod just and made me chuckle silently). Still, the clamor and enthusiasm were most appreciated.

I gave up on those two guys as I entered the last woods loop but then changed my mind, reflecting on how I'd told one of you (maybe Lucy) not to let that happen a couple of weeks ago and that I needed to live up to my own coaching. So I staunched the bleeding so speak and matched pace with them from 20m back until we got to what I judged to be the last half mile. At this point, I started the first stage of my kick: burn the reserves. Finally, something was going according to plan. I tried to run the "unsustainable pace" I'd done in near the end in several meets this season and caught back up to both guys. Coming off the hill, I remembered Zeke had told me that this was where Aiden Pillard had started his kick in 2014 so that sounded like a good idea; I switched from "burn off all your extra aerobic energy" mode to "get up on your toes and sprint" mode. Flew into the final turn catching still one more guy in front of a GDS crowd and then switched into my third and final gear: fight! I fought. Well, sorta. It was fast, but not desperate like I'd dreamed. I didn't really try to convince myself the guy ahead of me was catchable (he may have been) and instead started thinking about how long the straightaway was and how silent it had suddenly become. I turned on the gas pretty well in the final 50-70m and got up fairly close to him (1.7 seconds apparently), but not like I could have. As a result, I ended up 4 seconds over 18 minutes.

Was it a good effort? Yeah, I would say so. It felt hard the whole time. I was breathing heavily from basically the first field till the finish line and never gave up on myself. I didn't do much passing, but I fought hard to stay with the guys who I was with who I think ran the race pretty strategically and were constantly upping their effort. If my legs had been feeling better, I might have believed a PR (or maybe keeping up with Ethan) was possible and that would have provided an extra psychological boost on top of the physiological one. But given how my body was feeling on race day, I tried to make the most of the circumstances. And on any race day, that's all you can ask of yourself.

Obviously, I am incredibly proud of all of you getting to cheer you guys on was the real highlight. Best belated birthday present a coach could ask for. Though the takeout sushi my parents and I had in the car en route to the airport tonight was a close second.

Update: Hey, milesplit says I got 14th! Whad'ya know? I had NO IDEA I was that far up in the race. There always seemed to be INFINITY MORE PEOPLE in front of me. I definitely gotta come back next year and try for top 10. Ya hear that, Burns?

p.s. Who's race write up is gonna be the longest? Me, Siff (the elder), Siff (the younger), or Arthur? Maybe Noah "Allow me to introduce myself after 4 years" Braun will overtake all of us in an attempt to make up for lost time. The betting pool is now open.