Time Trials

Our second team practice turned out to be a great day weather wise... no soggy rain slowing us down this time. Today we actually got to go through our stretching routine. We learned a total of 18 stretches that covered both our upper body and lower body. After that I felt ready to take on our run.

This day was different though. Today we ran our one mile time trials to get an idea of our speed. We started off with a mile run to the starting line to get us warmed up. Once there Brett prepped us, lined us up at the starting line and let us loose. I have to say that I think I took off a little too hot out of the gates. My pace slowed about a third of the way through the mile. I wasn't worried though, I was still maintaining a good pace, and only two other people were ahead of me. I hit the turn around point, gave Cole (our assistant coach) the thumbs up and headed back. I didn't really pay attention much to the other runners as I passed them (running in the opposite direction) cause I was in the zone, but Jamie was able to break that zone for me as I saw her go blazing past me - she looked so good and I couldn't help but smile at her.

I felt my legs fatiguing under me as I hit the 3/4 mark, this was the moment of mind over matter I thought. My burst out of the gates had cost me too much energy in the beginning, and I was now paying the price - a valuable lesson I guess. I decided to kick up my pace and told myself that this was possible and dammit if I'm gonna let anyone finish close behind me - this, I thought, was a lesson in mental endurance training. I relied on my self talk and pattern breathing that I use when I run my one mile hill runs.

As I approached the finish line I could see Brett standing there looking intently at his stop watch. We was yelling out and cheering me on as I made my final sprint over the finish line. As I hit a fast walk he yelled out my time to me... "7 MINUTES 13 SECONDS!" ..wew, I thought, that sounded like a pretty good time for my first timed run. Jamie was not too far behind - but you'll have to check in to her blog to hear what she has to say about her run and time.

Our team is awesome. Everyone clapped and cheered and flung out high fives as other team members crossed the finish line. We are all going to rock it in SF this October!

We hit a nice easy run back and finished up with our stretching routine. Jamie and I headed back to our pad to sink into the couch and ice up our joints. WHAT A DAY!



Try and keep up with me!