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Meet @ USM-Gorham

January 22, 2011 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: N/A

Comments:
Phew! This meet went much better than I expected. From the beginning:

I got in a good warmup, and already I was feeling pretty good. I was stretching religiously before the mile, and that ended up going well. I guess my new thing is that I negative split the mile, because I ran around 2:27/2:25 for my splits (although the first half is a bit longer since it's a mile, not a 1600. Still a bit of a negative split, by around a second I think). I sort of ran by myself for the first half, and Stefan of Greely and Henry were up ahead. They slowed up a bit with 4 laps to go, and I sped up a bit to catch up with Henry. Stefan was a bit ahead, and with two laps to go I tried to pass Henry. He surged a bit until we hit the curve, where he knew I wouldn't try to pass him. On the last lap he did his crazy Henry-sprint and caught up with and then beat Stefan. I may have been able to stay with him until the last 50m, where he probably would have gapped me, but I wasn't in the mood to kill myself, especially with the impending 2mile. I finished in a respectable 4:52, which is a 2 second PR over my previous 4:53 1600m mark, and qualifies me for states.

Now, without a doubt, this is the most bittersweet moment of my track career. On one hand, I PR'd in the mile and beat Thomas' PR from a meet ago. On the other hand, this is the first time my season best in the mile has been better than my season best in the 800m. Also, this same meet Thomas ran a 2:07.high, beating my PR. Of course he has to rub it in, so naturally I'm not too happy about that.

Anyway, I was pretty nervous as the 2mile was nearing, especially since I'd have to anchor a 4x2 almost immediately after. My time was nothing impressive, but I have to say that was the most fun I've ever had running on a track. Maybe I'm just romanticizing it in my memories, but it was fucking awesome. I paced myself pretty well, raced smart(ly?) and I can finally say I've done a true distance double (4x8 + Open 8 doesn't count). I got beaten by Liam Campbell in the very end stage of the race, but I really think I could have beaten him. See, everyone started picking up the pace near the end of the race, so I figured we were nearing the final lap. I passed Stefan and Liam to put myself in second (first was way ahead of us, he obviously was an actual 2mile runner), and I was ready to sprint the final 200m when we passed the finish line. Well someone had stopped changing the lap counter so I saw that there were 2 laps left when there was actually only one. I had lost count long ago, so I took this as truth and slowed the pace a bit. The Greely kids, on the other hand, had a coach who was telling them to sprint. So Liam passes me, I realize from my watch that this is the final lap, and I sprint after him. Unfortunately, he got a good lead from when I looked down at my watch and the fact that he was sprinting when he passed me, while I was going around 5:30 pace. I caught up to him so I was maybe a foot behind, but I was done at that point and he won out in the end. It's a shame that I couldn't beat him, especially because he was just coming off of a 2:08 800, so I was more fresh than him. Also we're both Sophomores, so I can't even use age as an excuse... I guess I'll have to settle with complaining about the height advantage.

Despite that, the 2mile was an awesome race, and I may run it again during Outdoor. Meanwhile, I only have 2 regular season meets and WMCs to run a good seed time in the 800. I may not have started the season well, but I'm still eying that 2:04 sophomore record. Scoring at States would be nice too.

Anyway, the 4x2 was nothing special. I got a great lead left over from Jacob's starting leg, although we had lost a lot of it during our 2nd and 3rd legs. I started fast, but the lactic acid kicked in really early because of the 2mile I had just run, so I slowed down considerably and a sprinter from Greely caught me with .07 seconds to spare. I would have felt bad, but everyone was understanding about the pain I had just gone through, and we still won the meet by over 40 points. My split was around 26.2, which is not too great compared to what what I've been running in past 4x2's this season, but still decent all things considering.

Wow, I think I just wrote a novel. Also I was incredibly sore the next day, probably because my calves are not quite ready to run 3 miles in Victory spikes. It may have also been caused by my not cooling down after the 2 mile and 4x2.