The first race

Saturday, January 19th

9:30 AM - 5 Miles, 35 min
The Rockies, NY

I'll try to keep this short since I am exhausted and need to get to bed. Today was an exciting day as I was in NYC to watch the famous New Balance Games, an experience I had not had before. It was even more exciting because my good friend and teammate was competing in them. More on that in a bit.

So I had an ok run in the morning with Rupprecht and his team. When ran out at the rockies, which was cool because I was on trails again, but my legs were feeling sluggish and heavy. I tried doing some strides afterward but I only got in about 3 as the pain in my right leg was getting worse from them. No big deal though, I'll worry about that later. The point of today was to be supportive for Jess. She was running in the very prestigous NB Games Elite Mile which is a very big deal and is viewed as one of the biggest races in the world. I was very nervous for her leading up to this and just wanted to be as supportive as I could through everything and hope to see her happy with the experience. The race went out very hard and she found herself on the tail end of the field. She made a few attempts to move up but just didn't have the extra gears she needed to close on the other girls and finished with a time of 4:50. Unfortunately, she was not very happy after the race; this was very evident. However, I think as the day progressed, she was able to turn it around and see a lot of positives from the weekend. It was her first race of the season and we all know that when we put too many expectations on the first race, we usually end up walking away disappointed. I believe things will be different for her next weekend and she'll show us what she really is capable of.

So speaking of first races, mine's tomorrow. Crap! I am not really nervous about it, which is actually making me more nervous as a result. I am running the Mile at the GBTC Invitational and have set a public goal of 4:10 but am unsure of my ability to run that right now. There are some pretty fast guys in the race and I can assure you that I will not be intimidated, I will be aggressive, and I will run as hard as possible from start to finish. But that is all. I don't know what result come from it. Since I have no idea what I'm capable of for that distance right now, there is a possibility that my finish will not be pretty and I could walk away disappointed. But that is a risk I am willing to take in order to find out some answers. So I'm gonna get some sleep now and just hope for the best.

More on that tomorrow.