Club Cross Country Nationals

Today was race day! The race wasn’t until 12:45 so we had a lot of time. I had brought breakfast food which I was happy about because the hotel breakfast was like 11 dollars for a bowl of oatmeal and fruit. Later we walked down to Starbucks to get some coffee. Compared to the Calvin girls who thought I was crazy for drinking coffee before the run these girls were having more caffeine than me. Colleen ordered this drink called black out which she told me was cappuccino with 4 shots of espresso! Claudia had 3 Red Bull before the race!

When the race started I was in shock. All I felt were people flying past me. I felt like I was going backwards but I could tell I was still going really fast. At the first turn there were so many people I had to turn so wide but then I could see in the distance that I was going to have to be on the inside of this stake. This wasn’t looking good- either I was going to plow down the stake or I was going to end up on the outside of the fence. I some how got myself over in time. I have never ran with so many fast people in my life! I did start to pick people off at this point but I realized I was in the back third of the race. The annoying part of it was that I would pass 5 people going up the hill and then about 3 of them would pass me on the down hill. It doesn’t help to be good at going up if you stink at going down! : ) I passed 4 runners in the last 50 meters so that felt great. One of the girls I passed was from Club Northwest.

Although I had a great time I ended up 84th place out of 234 racers which is the highest place that I have gotten in a race in well…..at least 4 years : ). I was actually happy with my time because it wasn’t too far off what I ran when I was actually training for cross country and this was without any speed training. This isn’t a fair comparison because every race is different but I looked at the 2009 D3 nationals results and my time would have put me 10th overall.

After the race we went out to lunch and then went and showered. Later we all went out and explored Kentucky’s night life which included some Kentucky whiskey and beer, some Karaoke (which we learned means ‘tone deaf’ in Japanese), some dancing, and some horse racing on TV : ). It was a good time.



Oh I did forget to write something- our spikes for the race had not arrived in Chicago before we left for Kentucky so Nike overnighted them to Kentucky and we got them about 2 hours before the race : ) I have to show you how bright my shoes were. Friends watching said they could just look for the orange feet in order to locate me in the crowd. I went through all the pictures online and thought that there was none of me but then I noticed my feet in this picture…do you see the orange feet (click on the picture)? ( I put a circle around my feet : ) Those are my feet! I love my shoes- I have a new trademark—neon feet : )