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Comments: “Everyone stand tall and stay still.” Said the official. “On your marks…” then the always way too long of pause “BANG!” AND WE WERE OFF!!!!!!!! The start was up a HUGE hill. I’m not kidding. It was long and a mix of snow, long grass, short grass and mud. There was no consistency. There were over 300 women in this race and we all had to funnel into the course. Elbows were flying, people were stepping on your feet your heels, kicking you etc. It was CHAOS! We made it to the top of the hill and made an immediate right along the top of a ridge. This was really the only place on the course for “recovery.” I kept steady and we took another sharp right down the hill. Now, one might think with all the uphill that there would be a ton of downhill in recovery (which is typical) but not here. The downhill was EXTREMELY technical. In addition to sharp twists and turns, they left a little bit of snow on the corners and churned up a bunch of mud and rocks. There were some portions that reminded me of a BMX course. There was also a really sharp corner that was covered in ice and banked the wrong way so if you came in with too much momentum it would push you down off the course. Once you got through this technical portion there was a long, steady hill then back into some trees and a little more technical twists and turns. I was having a BLAST. A girl took one of the corners too fast and face planted right in front of me. I had to jump over her. She got back up and I asked if she was alright. No answer. The course took a really long U-turn and then we entered the most difficult part of the course. It was a long steady graded hill with a series of seep rollers within the already general uphill direction. This was the spot you just had to trust your fitness and put one leg in front of the other. At the VERY top of the hill was the steepest climb. You felt like you were walking. Once you made it over the summit you had about 15 meters to “recover” and then you had to hurdle the hay bales. I felt really good finishing this first loop. It was crazy, there was no consistent speed in this race. It was all about shifting gears, accelerating, decelerating and trying to keep an eye on your footing. It was very, very dense with runners so it was difficult to see too far ahead of you. The second loop got progressively harder. I was breathing CRAZY hard. I was definitely feeling not only the difficult course but also the altitude (the course was a little over 4,000 ft.) I just kept pushing, focusing on my coach’s comments to NOT PERSONALIZE the race. I knew everyone was suffering, just like me. I finished the second loop and started pondering my imminent death. Seriously. I couldn’t believe how hard it had gotten. At some points I felt as though I was walking. “One more lap, one more lap and then BEER”I kept reminding myself. I rounded the corner on one of the technical parts and my foot slipped out, I wobbled but recovered. I could tell my legs were getting shaky as I approached the final climb. I just kept pushing as much as I could, I literally didn’t feel like I had ANYTHING left. I got to the last little hill and just drove my legs as hard as I could and passed about 3 women, one of them who had resorted to crawling up the hill. Literally. I hurdled the hay bale, made the hard right down into the WAY-TOO-LONG finishing chute. It was a steep downhill (the same one we climbed up at the start) and footing was very unsteady. You just had to keep your eyes ahead, your hands down near your hips and churn your legs. I heard my coach say, “WE NEED YOU. GO!” so I surged past another women, through a huge mud puddle and across the finish line into my teammates arms. I have never, ever, ever in my life been so spent and had so little to show for it. But I was so happy. What would you do differently?: I just need to continue to improve as a runner. The better I get the more I realize I have to learn. I definitely should have taken some time off after AG OLY Nats. I was a little flat towards the end of this season. I felt I was getting more fit ... but just flat from all the racing. But I think I raced with every ounce I had in this race, I can can be absolutely content with that. One might not see that in my results, but I am pretty proud to be the 217th faster club xc woman in the nation :)  Post race
Warm down: I went and cooled down, put some layers on and met some of my friends who had driven down to spectate. They already had a beer for me! A Boneyard IPA at that! We went and found a spot to spectate. I told them from the get go, “Joe is going to win this thing. You just watch.” He came around the first loop in the top 20 ish. But there were 5 laps as the men do 10K. We watched SO MANY MEN have to DNF at the spot we were at. Some with twisted ankles, some just totally in oxygen debt to the point they could not continue. Joe came through the third lap, closing the gap to the top 5 or so. Just after he went by another guy rolled his ankle and went down. He pulled himself off the course and then just laid in the snow. I was worried and no one was helping him so I came over and asked if we was alright. It was pretty clear his ankle was totally jacked. Maybe even broken. He was in tears. I am not really good in these situations but he needed help. I helped him up and waved for my friends to come help me carry him. I offered him some of my beer and only then did he laugh. It was tricky getting him back because the terrain was really snowy and hilly. The poor guy was screaming in agony. I had thought about taking a drink of my beer every time he dropped and F-bomb. We got about halfway to the medical tent when we ran into some of his teammates who relieved us of our duties after many thanks. I had just enough time to run over to the finishing chute. I saw someone at the top of the hill in orange, making the sharp right. I couldn’t tell but I was pretty sure it was Joe. He ran down the hill and as he got a little closer I knew it was him. He had a huge lead so he put his hands up and took his time, celebrating down the hill then finally ran across the finish with his arms up. It was so freakin’ cool! I showered and changed in record time and we headed to the breweries!!!! GoodLife Brewing Company: I got a beer called “150 Hippies.” American Pale Ale, 5.3% ABV. The brewery was really lovely and the people super friendly. 10-Barrel Brewing: I had their “Pray for snow” American Strong Ale, 7.6% Deschutes Brewing: Chainbreaker White IPA, 5.6% ABV. THEN we headed to the awards banquet. There was quite a bit of money at stake for the winners, so the banquet was a pretty big deal. It was really awesome to see Joe get his award as the house went nuts. After the ceremony the dancing started. And didn’t stop for a good 4-5 hours. My entire team was out on the dance floor celebrating together. One guy from another team had us all "give him some space" on the dance floor. Then he proceeded to do the ENTIRE choreograph sequence from *NSYNC's "Bye, Bye, Bye." I've gotta find the video of that ... For some reason they had one of those brew-cycle (look it up) parked inside the conference center. And then for some reason we decided to commandeer said brew-cycle and ride it in laps around the dance floor. The morning after, I met up with my friends and we ran to the top of a little butte in Bend. It was gorgeous. I couldn’t believe how good I felt after a night of microbrews. Oh. That’s because I was still drunk! The hangover hit just before we left Bend. Luckily my friends were driving me home. Hangover or not, I was a happy camper. Our runners are VERY talented and we still got our rear spanked. You could be bummed about that but really, I just think the future if distance running for women is bright. I feel extremely privileged to be able to run with such a strong pack and have learned a TON about myself as a runner through this season. I have a ton of things to work on and a million takeaways. I can’t wait to use some of this stuff in my marathon training. But first, a nice break! For lots of photos, including some epic face plants, check this out: http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=16&year=2013&do=ph... What limited your ability to perform faster: Must ... get ... faster Take some time off between seasons Practice more in spikes Profile Album Last updated: 2013-12-16 12:00 AM
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36F / 2C
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This was my very first year running cross country. I had decided to use it as part of an overall periodization plan for my marathon training. I figured it would be a really good opportunity to work on my strength; physically and mentally. And boy did it …
The 10 big story lines: http://www.letsrun.com/news/2013/12/10-storylines-2013-usatf-nation...
I run with a club. In fact, it’s a pretty damn competitive club. Every Wednesday and Saturday I go practice with them, and by practice I mean running intervals or hills or long tempos, barely hanging on there at the back Anyway, I was lucky enough to get to be on one of the women’s teams for Club XC Nationals. They paid our expenses and chartered us a bus down to Bend, Oregon where the event was held.
We boarded the bus Thursday afternoon in the midst of serious rush hour traffic. Who planned that?? As we crept along on the freeway, lively conversations about running arose, covering topics from the importance of the role of social media in an elite runner’s career to turtle soup (a very nerdy obscure ref.) I was with my people! About two hours had passed and we had made it, ohhhh, 22 miles maybe? That’s when we all heard a “BOOM” then a “chug-a-chug-clank-clank-clank …” Yep, blew the transmission. So there we were, stranded on the freeway. The bus driver appeared to have no idea what to do. He said a mechanic could come, or maybe another bus might be able to pick us up. After about an hour, it was pretty clear that nothing was going to happen. One of my teammates took charge and started calling around. We eventually were able to reserve 4 mini-vans. We then had to get someone to pick up 4 of us, go to the airport, get the vans then come back and pick us all up.
2.5 hours later, we were on the road again!!!! Unfortunately, we had to pick up some teammates along the way. They had killed the nearly 4 hour delay in a Taco Time I guess. We picked them up and came to a group decision that driving all the way to Bend in the middle of the night through an icy/snowy pass probably wouldn’t be a great idea. So we agreed to make it a little east of Portland then leave early so that we could get to Bend before the course preview closed.
We woke up early the next morning, had some breakfast and got on the road. I was lucky enough to ride in the van with an elite guy on our team that is a professional runner. Meaning he makes his living from his sport. It was AMAZING just talking to him about his experiences, (his love of Baskin Robin’s ice cream cakes) his decision-making, and his training. Everything. And he was such a nice guy on top of that. I knew he was going to win this thing.
We got to Bend, quickly changed and headed to the course. We all KNEW this course was not going to be a PR course. But I don’t know that we thought it would be quite like this. There was mud, snow, grass, hills, hay bales, hills, rocks, hills, dirt mounds and hills. Did I mention hills? Max King had designed this course with the idea of bring XC back to its roots (PUN!) And boy did he.
After the preview we showered and headed out to dinner. It was amazing to be in town with a bunch of amazing athletes that I had only seen on TV before; Athletes that I was going to have the privilege of toeing the line with in the morning. I got to room with a two time Olympic Trials qualifier so I got to pick her brain too. She was also very, very nice and willing to share her experiences with me. I just felt so lucky (and a little bit like I didn’t belong here.)
That night we had a big team meeting and went over logistics, race strategy and talked about spike length and what we might want to think about wearing. Then us ladies painted our nails in our team colors. I never paint my nails and did a TERRIBLE job. A big thing our coach said in the meeting was not to personalize the race. He said that due to the toughness of the course, it would be really easy to start to feel sorry for yourself but if you stepped back and realized that you were all going through the same thing, it would be easier to keep pushing on. This really resonated. ESPECIALLY when I wanted to sneak off the course and curl up in the fetal position somewhere between lap 2 and 3 … more on that in a minute.
Race day! The team had breakfast and then headed up to the course. Us women didn’t start until 12:00 so we were able to take our time. It had gotten a little windy and the temps dropped a little bit but nothing TOO crazy. We got word that one of our women won the masters OA which was an AWESOME way to start! We warmed up, changed clothes put on our spikes and headed to the starting box. We did some strides and then settled into starting position.