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ISLs

October 26, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: Cool and maybe a little drizzle

Comments:
We had a very nice bus departure time of 10:00 which allowed some sleeping in, this morning. I left my house and got to school where I got on the bus and we left. I sat with Daniel Goldblatt who was running his first race today!!!! We listened to music and we all talked. I was super SUPER excited to run today but I was a little nervous in the back of my mind. I knew we could do really well today and I was super excited about that. In the words of the movie Dumb and Dumber “so you’re sayin there’s a chance?!”

We got there and listened to Anthony talk about the races then we gave seniors their posters. After that Arya, Ella, Annie, and I went on a little jog and ran for a little bit with the freshman sophomore boys who were accompanied by Matt Simonson (surprise!!) and were warming up for their race. I ate some lunch and watched and cheered for all of the races. My favorite part of the whole day was probably during the varsity B girls race when I was cheering on the hill. Everyone looked so incredibly strong and were fighting for every step and just trying to catch people and run hard. It was beyond inspiring to watch and It just made me so happy.

When we started our warmup we jogged down near the finish to watch the first mile part of the boys varsity B race. We watched giant clumps of GDS runners go by. It seemed like the whole race was just GDS it was incredible! We were jogging back and forth down there to wait for all of them to go by when we saw Daniel!!! It was so so so exciting to watch him race after this whole season being unable to race and last spring being unable to race but still coming to practices and meets. It was so fun to watch him kill it today. After that we ran back up the hill then did a 2.5 min tempo which made me feel way better, I felt looser and faster it was super nice. Then we did dynamics I think maybe I mixed the dynamics up with the tempo I’m not sure. Anyway while we were doing dynamics we watched the boys finish which was amazing! They whole front of the race was green and well basically the whole race was green! A few leaves were caught (not by me) and we did standing dynamic stretches. I was getting more and more excited for my race but I found that during the quiet moments of stretching and warming up I was getting a little nervous. After we finished warmups we went over to the area and got our stuff. Most people grabbed their stuff to spike up and the line but I like to do it at the stuff for some reason so I did. Then I did striders, the first 2 felt a little slow but as I got into them they felt better and I became more confident about the race. I always remember what Abby told me my first xc race which is you always feel better when you take off your sweats. So on my last 2 striders I took my pants off (sweatpants not all of my pants) and did the last ones like that which felt very nice. In our huddle after some speeches we did our little chirp circle thing and that got me very hype and all of my nerves were gone. Then we did a little run good out in front of all the teams and strode? strided? back to the line.

According to a video Abby sent tonight I did some weird bouncy thing with my legs at the line and then we heard the gun and ran. I was in the middle-ish front part of the race with maybe 25-30 people in front of me. I started running and trying to pass people I don’t know why I started passing people so early but I guess the championship excitement got to me. I felt like I was going pretty fast but I didn’t think anything bad would happen if I did so I kept going. Ella wasn’t too far in front of me which I thought was kind of weird so when we were going down a small hill less than a mile in I yelled to her to go. She did. I was next to Sophia Charles who I remembered from some St. Albans runs and she beat me by a few seconds at salesianum I think. I kept passing her on the downhills which I tried to push a lot. But she kept passing me back which was annoying. I could see she was doing the same thing with Ella who was in front of me. I remember hearing my first mile split was 6:07 and i was kind of worried because the only other mile split I have ever been able to hear in a race was 6:20. But then I was just like, eh it’s fine it already happened I’ll just keep running I guess. At around a mile and a half I was going down a hill and caught up to Ella again and at this point I tapped her shoulder to tell her to keep pushing, she told me after the race it was more of a slap than a tap but it got the point across. Anyway throughout the whole race people were yelling my place to me and I stayed in 17-18 basically the whole race (Sophia Charles and I switched places a lot) so as I was passing people I was counting my places. Actually maybe I wasn’t because at the end I had no idea what place I was in. But anyway I was kind of dead the entire race and I think I had a cramp but I just chose to not pay attention to it, I don’t think it was that bad. I was definitely tired the entire time but hearing all the gds runners cheering was super nice and helped me push a little harder. Going up that big hill at the end wasn’t that bad actually, maybe because I was already dead but I just got to the top all of a sudden and realized I had to push to the end now. I passed Sophia Charles around 400 meters back and now I could see another girl in blue in front of me. I think I passed her at the top of that hill, when I saw a holy child girl a little bit ahead. I decided I was going to try to get her by the end of the race, I was going down into the valley when I just ran and caught her but we ran next to each other for a little until I didn’t really want to fight it with her so I moved quickly in front then maybe a little to the left to cut her off then I just wanted to create space in between us because we were going into the last straight away and there wasn’t anyone really in-front of me. I could see Ella finishing with a big group of girls ahead and I pushed for the finish line which seemed to be coming towards me at a very slow rate. But I kept going trying to find a face in the crowd of people. I think I saw Ken and maybe Seth but I also might be making that up, I can’t remember. But then I finished. Woah that was tiring. I didn’t collapse at the end but I bent over so that’s good enough, but then I turned around and Annie had collapsed!! She later said that she had just tripped, we helped her over to the car and stood there watching for the finishes of the Dora and Abby and Lucy and Arya. Who all finished so hard and ran sooooo well. We all hugged and then walked over to talk to Anthony. I found out I got 14th!! Which is crazy because I was sure I had gotten 17th or 16th. And Ella got 10th!!

We jogged up to watch the boys race and saw them coming down around the finish line area. We cheered for them and then went up to get sweats on and stuff. We took pictures then went down to watch the boys finish. They all ran super well and it was very exciting to see. We went up to our stuff and the award ceremony happened, every team did super well and let’s just say I think GDS cheered the loudest. After that we listened to all of the coaches give little speeches which was super nice. Then we left.

ISLs today was so fun and just magical to see all of the runners out their all into the races. And just run so well. To see my teammates have just a perfect culmination of all the training they have done over the season has been incredible and what a great ISLs to have as my first.