Last night, instead of a regular cross country practice, my coach told our team to join in on a local track meet. So we all went to Cathedral Catholic High School for the Winter Distance Festival. I didn’t know what to expect but realized shortly after we arrived that this was going to be fun. No pressure, pretty casual. It was a small turnout with mostly high school runners and I like running against new people.

I entered the 3200m event and ran in the Junior/Senior Girls group. I just got some new spikes and this was my first chance to try them out. They were AWESOME!!! So light. They felt like air. If you’re wondering which ones I have, I have the Brooks Mach 14. I LOVE THEM!!!

Anyway, I’ve never done a 3200m at the track so I decided to just treat it like a cross country race and run my own race. For the first 4 laps, I was in the lead but got overtaken by one girl. I could tell from her pace that if I picked up my own pace, I would not be able to keep it up for the distance so I stayed at my pace and tried to keep the distance between us from getting too far apart. I managed to do this and stayed about 30m behind her until the last 300m where I started to pick up my pace and try to lessen the gap.

Down the final 100m stretch, I managed to come in 2 seconds behind her. I was really proud of myself.

I just learned her name and this is the girl who beat me.

I have 8 days left to go before Nationals. Stay healthy everyone!