Indoor Opener

Saturday marks my career indoor debut, and also my season opener, at East Tennessee State University's Niswonger Invitational (likely closer, too, due to half marathon training/scheduling, and also due to the fact that I am redshirting the season). I will be racing the 3,000m, and I'm both excited and feeling good about the race. We're training through it, of course, but I still think it will be fun, especially if my legs don't feel heavy on the line. If they do...well, it won't be so much fun, but if they feel spry, then I think I will have a lot of fun on Saturday.

Last Friday was the 1600m time trial, and for those of you who didn't catch it on the Twitter Updates (the "Mini-Posts" on the top of the main page), I went 4:59 and came in second on the team. Andrew Hege was first in 4:53, and then there was a pack of several guys right behind me from Ben Hall at 4:59 to Jared Neilson at 5:08ish. The effort felt super controlled and relaxed for me, and I was genuinely pleased with the day. Coach Larios emphasized repeatedly that he wanted to see us all go "whites of our eyes" during the race, but the fact is that none of us were really quite sure where our fitness level stood and therefore the race was run cautiously. There was a tight pack of five or six of us, with Luke Copeland leading the race, until 1000m when Hege opted to push the pace. At that point, I hesitated, waiting to see if anyone was going to chase him, and when I saw that nobody was, I went after/with him myself. Ben made up about 10-12 meters on me in the final 200m, that boy can move at the end of the race, that is for certain. Travis Yoder said, however, that he saw some nice footspeed out of me in the last 25 or so meters of the race, which was encouraging, because that's when I realized that Ben was about to pass me and I cranked it up a little bit.

On Monday, the marathon group (consists of Andrew Hege, Jared Neilson, Jed Edwards, Ben Hall and myself) went for a 90 minute long run at 6:40 pace. Normally, while a harder effort, that wouldn't be a difficult effort, but one must remember that we have spent the last six-plus weeks running nearly exclusively on the roads, and certainly not on the up-and-down terrain of Montreat, NC. To make it worse, the grass trails that we ran on were extraordinarily soft due to a light rain that hovered over the area all of Monday. It was mutually decided that the 6:40 pace was closer to 6:10 or 6:15 effort, which is far faster than we have been doing long runs (I've been going probably 6:45-7:00 on the roads, myself). It was a difficult run, but obviously it's one that needs to be done and repeated in order to hit that new A standard of 74 minutes.

This afternoon the entire team traveled ten minutes down the road to Owen High School in Black Mountain and did our track workouts for the week. The men--except for a couple guys on a "30/50" plan (30 min in the morning, 50 in the evening, every day) to allow them to regain fitness lost over break due to injury or illness--went 3x1600 + 1x1200 at 5:20 pace. Well, 5:20 was the goal. I think as a whole we ended up averaging about 5:25 pace, however, it was inredibly windy and Coach said he was very pleased with the effort. I myself ran 5:20, 5:33, 5:25 and 4:05. I felt really great through about 1300m of the first rep, and then suddenly I felt as if somebody punched me in the gut, and knocked the wind out of me. It was a very weird feeling that didn't go away the rest of the workout. After the 5:33, I mentioned it to Ben, who said to me, "If you can't stand the heat, pull out." I obviously would have none of that, and gutted it up. Ben later told me that he was just trying to get me fired up a little bit. It worked!

I must say, it was a whole lot of fun today running a workout where I was rubbing elbows with the rest of the team the whole time. This was exactly what I had in mind in high school when I pictured college workouts. It is also an opportunity that I did not really have during the fall when I was instead attempting to make up for lost fitness all season. Yes, I ran in a lot of workouts, but many of them were alone or with just Luke Copeland, or trying really hard to hold onto the back of the pack...none of them were as much fun as this workout.

I will be updating Twitter and maybe posting some pictures during the meet on Saturday. It appears we'll be there all day, as Hege is running the 5,000, which starts at 8 AM, and the team is also competing in a DMR, which will run sometime in the late afternoon. It should be a good day, though. I've only been at one indoor meet in my life--NAIA Nationals last March--but it was a lot of fun to watch. I'd imagine getting to compete will be all the more fun. Also, the Knoxville Track Club hosts a High School meet in conjunction with the Niswonger meet, and several friends of mine who happen to be in high school still are racing in that meet, so I will get to see some good friends, also.