Race Report: Varsity Cross Country Tryouts

Goals: I wanted to win, but didn't care as long as I made varsity, which is top 7, in case you don't know. Time-wise I wanted to average 6min/mi for what was supposed to be a 5k road course.

Pre-race: So I didn't know this was going on today until I texted my coach to ask where we were meeting for practice. Had I known the tryouts were today, I would not have run 7 hilly miles yesterday. Oh well. Ate some chicken burritos and took a cold bath last night to help not be so sore, and I didn't seem super sore, but my legs didn't have that much pop this morning. Woke up at 6 for a 7 am race and pooped 4 times like the real runner I am. Warmed up for two miles to the track, and did some strides.

The Course: The course is a road course that I run several times a week, and I literally know it forwards and backwards. It is fairly flat, and Garmin Connect shows a total elevation gain of 22ft over the course of the 2.85 miles. It was supposed to be a 5k, but all of our road courses are in rough measurements. You have to cross the second busiest road in town twice, but I got lucky both times with no cars coming.

The Race: We all crowded up on the start line, which is a speed limit sign. Every team was having varsity tryouts today, so we had a huge clump of everyone from high school boys to middle school girls starting at once. We start with a "runners set, go" command and I try to settle in as quickly as possible. At this point there are middle school girls ahead of me, but I am not concerned because my first quarter-mile is in 91. The eventually top 2 got out really hard and I, in hindsight, should have gone with them because I probably could have stayed up there. Anyway, now I start to pass some people that went out way too hard and move up to like 9th place. Nothing real eventful until we cross the street immediately after the first mile, which passes in about 6:20. I wasn't too worried about pace, because I knew coming in that I probably wasn't going to run all that quick due to a lot of reasons. After crossing the street, there is a small hill and I use it to my advantage to surge up and get right on the heels of the two people ahead of me. About 200m after the hill I threw down a really hard surge and moved up into 7th place. At this point in time I still wasn't sure if I was in the top 7, so I focused on the person falling off the back of the main pack. Around the end of the 2nd mile I passed him and crossed the street again. I can actually count places properly now and know that I am in varsity position, and at this point my gut is on fire but my legs and lungs aren't too bad. The whole race I have been making up ground and catch up too one of my closer friends on the team with about 600m to go. I can't really see the top two people but there are two ahead of me that I focus on. We turn onto the final long street, which is about .20 miles so I started to drive a bit harder but still keep something in reserve. 3rd place pulls away pretty well but 4th comes in and I pass him. At this point I thought I was set too go and even though I still have a good bit more in the tank I didn't pick up the pace at all, just kept coming in at the pace I was at. I can see the person who had been in 4th's bright purple shirt out of the corner of my eye and he is coming hard. I pull out a pretty hard sprint and was able to shift gears really quickly, the issue is I don't have a great top gear. He beats me by 1-2 seconds and I finished in 5th place, so I made varsity! I finished in 17:55 according to my coaches watch, 17:59 according to mine. This wasn't a really hard race effort, probably around 90-95 percent of max effort for a 5k. I could only just feel the lactic acid starting to creep into my back and arms, not really at all in my legs.

Takeaways: I am satisfied that I made varsity, but I made a metric butt-ton of errors with pacing and tactics. My splits weren't great (91, 95, 97, 96, 93, 97, 97, 96, 99, 97, 91, then 29 for the last .1 miles.) and I got out way too slow. I feel as if I could have been top 3 easily if I had just gotten out quicker. And then there at the end I way over-estimated my own kick. I had the strength to kick basically with everything I had, but I just have awful speed. Overall, this just wasn't a good race for me, but I'm not gonna let it bother me. I didn't exactly have a good pre-race yesterday like all my teammates and am still not readjusted to the pounding of the roads after a week on a treadmill. So happy to make varsity, though, and now have a goal for my first XC race, which is the 29th. I want to run 11:20 for the 2 mile course, which is the same time I started with in track season for the 3200m. I feel like I am in better shape than I was then, so I figure that I should be able to run around the same, and that would set me up well for the times I want to hit for 5k.

Thanks for reading!

EDIT immediately after posting: Sorry, I did not realize how much I had written. I am listening to music and just kind of started drumming all my thoughts on the keyboard.