GOING THE DISTANCE

6am -  Easy 3 miler, Arctic Circle route.

11:30 am  -  We had an early so that was legit.  Me, Jake, Paul and Luis ate lunch so we knew we were gonna be late but we should have only been 9 minutes late cuz we got out at 11:39 and the team was gone.  So we chose to do 4 mile sandburgs cuz we thought the run for the day was supposed to be 4 miles.  Luis ran with a so it was a bit slow pace, around 8:30 minute mile, but it was relaxed and really fun.  We jumped in the pond and it was muy frio.  Dallin and Brad showed up right before we left.  We asked them how far we were supposed to go and it was only 3 miles and we were already at 3.3 so we walked to the road.  Then we ran the rest of the way.  After that I did 5 hill sprints.

3pm -  Today was our teams winter 1600m time trial.  I didn't have much goals coming in to today but I guess I wanted to at least pr by a second.  On the warm up my legs felt tired and I started to say to myself, "oh great, I'm gonna do crappy."  But then I totally changed my attitude and told myself I felt good and practiced my knee drive.  We got back at the high school and put our spikes on and did final warm ups.  I did my normal routine of jogging back and forth across the field.  I keeps me from getting nervous.  

The girls ran and then we started.  The first lap was good and mostly everyone was still in a pack.  The time was 1:08.  I pushed a bit and felt good and the next lap we came through at around 2:20.  The third lap hurt but I was able to stay strong mentally.  Going into the last lap I think it was around 3:31 so I knew I could get under 4:40 but I would have to demolish this lap cause I was beat.  The last 200 me and matt kinda moved up together and passed kyler and we sprinted in basically right next to each other and tied.  My time was 4:42.  Didn't get my mid-race goal but I got a nice PR that I didn't expect to get so I'm pretty pumped.  My bro did was legit getting 5:20 and PRing by 20 seconds.  Ashby better watch out.

3pm -  We did 4 mile sandburgs and did striders after.

7pm -  Ran an easy three miler in Kingman on the way to nike regionals.  Good.  Swell.

7am-  Ran 3 miles down route 66 in kingman.  

8am-  Ran 1 mile getting breakfast at mcdonalds.

4pm-  Ran 3 miles on the Nike Southwest Regional course.  It was pretty wet and a really pretty course since it is on a golf course.  It was rainy and a nice temperature.  Looks like it will be way fun.

9am -  Our team got to the golf course at like 7:30 and unlike yesterday, the wind was blowing super hard.  Which made it really cold.  The 2 days I'd been in Arizona it was cold and rainy.  We watched Rylee and Christina race then I went and laid in the tent for a while.  At 9 we went and warmed up for 1.5 miles so I kept jogging till I had to go line up for our race and got in 2 miles.  I just kept jogging in the starting area which really keeps me not nervous and makes me race better.  

The race started at 9 and the sun came our right at our race.  This race was pretty official so the gun really dissapointed me.  It wasn't much more than a pop.  I got out good and looked for pine view guys to move up to.  I passed Kyler and moved up to Colton and stayed with him most of the race.  We came through the first mile at 5:07.  The course was really muddy and torn up.  I was shooting for at least a 16:30 and I'm sure the mud slowed the times down a lot.  Mike ran faster last year than the winner this year.  There was this gulley thing that ran through the middle of the golf course which was full of water like 3 inches deep.  We crossed that 4 times.  Me and Colton came through 2 miles at 10:40 so the pace really fell of and that wasn't good.  I started to speed up here and I pulled away from colton here and it hurt significantly. My hammy were hurting.  I just told myself that its ok and to keep running.  1000 meters left I gave it another push and began to pass people.  Only problem was I started my move to soon.  With 400 meters left my legs were starting to shut down and my legs were burning.  I yelled to myself to go but people were passing me.  It was the first time i didn't have anything left.  I was able to dig the final 50m and passed a guy and barely broke 17 minutes.  This race was way legit and I am happy with how I raced.  After we got together and did a short cooldown.  The championship race was cool and Connor Mantz did way good.