Day 2, Race 2

Today was my second cross country race in a row. This was the one I had mentioned in my previous post that gave trophies and medals up to tenth place! It turned out that there were no other varsity runners from my school, but I was ok with that. I still wanted to do this race for fun. Also one thing I love about running and triathlon is getting to know so many people. So there was no shortage of people to chat with and stuff from other schools. Unfortunetely my sister decided not to race, but at least she still came for support. I took some of my school's grade seven boys on a warm up run with me. For all of them it was their first cross country race. It made me think back to all the races I have done over the last few years. I don't even have to think about doing it much anymore. I was happy to answer all their questions though; how fast should we start out? how do we know where to go? when should we pick it up at the end? All of a sudden I was told to hurry to the start line and I didn't have much time to mentally prepare before the gun went off. Oh well. I started out with the lead pack and throughout the race slowly dropped off them, while keeping them in my sights. The difference from yesterday's race was it was a different zone, so different competition, which was a good challenge. Actually there were two zones which they split up at the finish line, and I don't technically belong to either zone... but it was an intivational so I was put into one anyways. But back to the race. I knew that my friend and triathlon teammate Ashlyn was a bit behind me, and behind her I think there was a decent gap before other packs. Ashlyn and I run together in practice all the time and are very similar right now, so it could have been anyone's race depending on how we were feeling. With about a kilometer to go I felt myself fading, feeling the fatigue from the day before. I started thinking about how no one would be disappointed in me if she passed me.... but I had been feeling good up until that point so I pushed on and tried to maintain a positive attitude. With about half a kilometer to go she was really starting to catch up and even though it didn't actually matter because we are in different zones, I figured we might as well continue to push each other, and I didn't want to give up. I entered my finish chute still a few meters ahead of her entering the other one. Solid race for both of us. I had no idea which girls ahead had been in my zone. Turned out I was second from my zone, but first varsity girl. So I came home with that first place trophy! Anyways that was some fun racing for this week but back to practices for the next few days. Next Tuesday will be a race at Kilcona where it's important to have my full varsity girls team competing, in order to qualify as a team!