I'll be home for Christmas...

Exactly 6 months after I moved to Flagstaff, I'm heading home for Christmas. I'll be spending the next 10 days sharing my new culinary skills with my family, meeting up with friends for coffee, and of course training REALLY hard. Shayla recently updated my training schedule with some KILLER workouts and I was pretty nervous I wouldn't be able to hit the times. Then I realized something: there's so much oxygen in Nebraska!!! Yes, the workouts will still be crazy hard, but I don't think they'll actually be impossible. Still, it would be reeeeeally nice to have some company if anyone in Southeast Nebraska feels like jumping in... I'm just saying.

USATF Club Cross Country Championships

Butternut Squash Bisque

Right now I’m sitting on the plane from Seattle back to Phoenix. What a whirlwind of a weekend! I got in on Thursday evening and headed straight to my hotel, quite nervously, via public transit. I wasn’t nervous because I thought anything bad would happen to me, like getting mugged. I was nervous because I really don’t know anything about navigating the public transit system and I worried that I wouldn’t make it to my hotel. But I made it in one piece and got checked in. Because it was already dark and I am very good at getting lost, I decided not to take my chances with running outside and hit the hotel treadmill (which didn’t go well at all). I then grabbed a late dinner of butternut squash bisque and grilled chicken at the hotel restaurant and went to bed.

Friday was when the race activities started. After getting my coffee – it’s Seattle… I HAD to get coffee – I picked up my packet (including a free shirt!) and headed over for the course preview. Now, Seattle is VERRRRY hilly, but the race was going to be on a golf course and I was shocked at how un-Seattle it was in that regard. Maybe it’s just because I’m so used to training in the mountains, but this course didn’t have anything you could call a “hill” and even the one “incline” was hardly noticeable to me. I had mixed feelings about this. I knew that the flatness of the course meant it would likely be very fast and I’d be able to take a lot of time off my college xc PR. But, after 6 months in Flagstaff, I’m beginning to consider myself a “strength runner” and thought I might have an advantage on any hills on the course, but a flatter course tends to favor the speedy girls. I even ran one loop of the 2k loop course in the opposite direction, hoping to discover a hill  that had previously evaded detection. No luck. But I did discover one of my Oiselle teammates, Jessica, and we had a quick chat before she set out to run the course and I hopped the shuttle back to the hotel. After the pasta dinner organized by Club Northwest and the technical meeting where I met up with our Oiselle team coordinator, Kristin, and Linda and Will from Team Nebraska, it was again time for some sweet, sweet slumber.

Last 100 meters!

And just like that, it was race day! I tried to keep myself relaxed and follow my normal routine… breakfast, coffee, pinning on my race number, freaking out… Okay, not that last part. Not too much, anyway! Since it was cold and rainy (classic Seattle weather!) I didn’t want to get to the course too early. Most of the club teams had rented tents, but I was on my own and didn’t get invited to share the Team Nebraska tent until AFTER the race. I hopped on the shuttle about an hour and a half before my race was set to start, but the driver waited until we were full, so we didn’t actually leave the hotel until 1:15 before… I wanted some time to situate myself before I started my warm-up, but when I finally got there, we were only 55 minutes out from race time. So, I dropped my bag and went for a 2 mile warm-up jog. I found Jessica again, and we went to get clerked in (they checked to make sure we had both of our numbers pinned on properly and our timing chips affixed to our shoes.) After some quick strides, we had to strip off our extra clothes and step up to the starting line. For some reason, the starter’s instruction speech always seems to be at least ten times longer than it needs to be when we’re shivering on the starting line, severely underdressed for the weather.

Me with Oiselle teammate Liz post-race

When the gun went off, we took off HARD. I didn’t really know what to expect going into this race. In college, I pretty much always knew how I’d stack up since I raced the same girls week after week. But, this was a whole other level. I didn’t want to go out too fast and die. 6k can feel like a marathon if you burn up all your energy too early. I also didn’t really have any sense of how fast I was running at first, since I don’t do much running at sea level anymore so I couldn’t judge exactly what my effort level meant in terms of pace. Luckily, they had clocks at each kilometer mark, so I didn’t have to wait too long. When I went through the 1k in 3:30, I did a little quick math… I couldn’t convert 1k splits into mile pace, but I knew that 3:30 per k would yield a 21:00 finishing time. My college PR was 22:23 (from the 2010 ECAC championship race in RI). I normally would let something that big freak me out, but I could hear Shayla’s pep talk from the night before in my head: “You’re ready to roll!” and I stayed calm.

Liz, me and Jessica

I don’t have a whole lot to say about the race itself… I held a mostly even pace and ran with essentially the same pack of women the whole time. It was pretty shocking seeing my splits at each kilometer and the mile mark (5:30!).  At the halfway point, the clock read 10:30. This time last year, that would’ve been a 3k pr by 16 seconds. The split my dad later found the most exciting was the 4k, which I went through in right around 14 minutes. Why is that so huge? I finished my first high school 4k cross country race in 22:59. That’s about a 9-minute improvement in 8 years.

And I finished 47th in 21:17… 1:06 faster than I ever ran in college! Heck yes! I’m obviously quite happy with my time and I knew I was going to run a pretty big PR, but I’m also pretty surprised. In college, I did several months of workouts before peaking for the championship races. This time, I mostly just put in base mileage for 6 months with occasional workouts and no attempt to peak. After I start adding in serious workouts, good things are coming in my track season for sure! Now I just have to plan the season out… something I never had to do in college.

Me and Oiselle founder, Sally

Another thing I didn’t have to do in college was pay for travel and entry fees. Because I’m now racing on my own dime, I have to be a lot more selective about when and where I race. I can’t just chase a qualifying time week after week… My big goal for indoor track is to qualify for the 3k at the Husky Classic up at the University of Washington in Seattle (9:45). I still have some details to work out, but I’m thinking I’ll be going after that mark on January 7th at Indiana University. We shall see…

Letting Go

Tomorrow I'll be boarding a plan to Seattle for the USATF Club Cross Country Nationals. Club Cross usually isn't a huge deal for individual athletes. The focus is more on the team aspect, from small local running clubs to the professionals like Flagstaff's own McMillan Elite. However, this year, with spots on a national team on the line, this race is drawing more high profile athletes than usual. And I have to admit that looking at the entry list is more than a little intimidating. What I originally thought would be a low-profile chance to run a new 6k PR and meet up with Oiselle women has suddenly become the first serious competition of my post-collegiate career (AND a chance to run a new 6k PR and meet up with Oiselle women and a few other old and new friends). That could be pretty scary, but I've decided I'm not going to let myself think that way. My theme for this week is letting go...

I'm letting go of fear.
I'm letting go of doubt.
I'm letting go of expectations.
I'm letting go of the runner I used to be.
I'm letting go of the people who try to tear me down.
I'm letting go of anger.
I'm letting go of that workout that didn't go so well today.
I'm letting go of the voice in my head that tells me I can't or am not good enough.

And I'm embracing hope.
I'm embracing joy.
I'm embracing uncertainty.
I'm embracing the runner I am now.
And I'm embracing the runner I have yet to become.
I'm embracing all the people who support me.
I'm embracing forgiveness.
I'm embracing the voice in my head that asks "Hey, why not?"
And I'm embracing the "impossible."

On Saturday, I will race in the Oiselle uniform for the 2nd time and this time I'll have some of my Oiselle teammates lining up with me. We're going to go fast and take chances. I hope you're ready, because I sure am!