View Workout (Chris Kelly)

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October 13, 2012 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: Good day.

Comments:
Oberlin meet today. We came in with really high hopes of what we wanted to accomplish at this meet. Trying to earn some respect nationally. It was a nice day for running. Ran in gloves but not too cold. Kinda like how it was in Virginia when I prd in the 5k. Pretty similar conditions. The field was a return to the strength of what it was like freshman year. There were 6 ranked teams in the race. We learned that morning that Wabash showed up. Weren't expecting that but didn't really change the strategy at all. By far the most competition of the season so far. Similar to conference.

We were the first race so we warmed up pretty much right when we got there. Felt pretty good on the warm up. I had been feeling good pretty much since after my run yesterday. My legs felt good and stuff. Did a pick up mile to end the warm up. I like that. I don't think it makes me feel any better but it does eliminate just sitting around between the end of the warm up jog and going over to the line. I always don't know what to do with myself in that time. I felt like today I had enough time to do everything I needed to but also didn't have to rush which was good.

Kinda a messed up start. They wanted to use a cannon... it failed the first time. That was weird. Finally got things started. Got out well I felt like although we did get swallowed up by the pack. Kinda a fight through the first few turns. A couple of our guys lost their shoes in the scrum. Thankfully they recovered. We were right on where Barnes was standing for the half mile and again at the mile. It was hard to pass people. I understand why Coach says we need to get out harder. I think a lot of people got caught in the back. There were a lot of people. And it was definitely a fight to pass people I thought. This course was much narrower than others we've ran on and that hurts us coming up from the back.

Also the jam of people hurt our pack I think. I separated from Ethan and David somewhere around mile 2 or 3 I think. That's where I stopped hearing people cheer for us as a pack and things started to be individual. I got nervous at that point. I felt like I should have done more to pull them with me. I tried to yell. Just tried to pass as many as I could throughout the race. Definitely a different feeling than what I felt at All-Ohio though. I knew we weren't close to the front. And it wasn't easy to pass guys like it has been in previous races. I felt like I had to fight a lot more for every place today than in races past. That's probably due to the quality of this field but still.

Basically tried to pass until the end. Just kept thinking about getting people and I knew there were Wabash guys around us. I recognized they were wearing black t-shirt like things around the 5k. I don't feel like I did a very good job catching them or fighting them. There were 2 in front of me I think. That's way too many. Kicked better than I did at All-Ohio, still not very good. Saw the clock around the finish and it said 24:58 knew it was gonna be close.

Finished and turned to see Ethan and David coming in. What a relief. I was nervous from when we lost contact to when we finished, but seeing them put it all to rest. When I was helping David up I guess Tim and Phil came in. It didn't register right away that was had like a 33sec spread. I was kinda nervous for Ben coming in as well as i missed him. But seeing everyone else come in was awesome. PR's for a ton of people. We started getting mixed stuff from people. I heard 4th from some, third from others. I started to get pumped up. Also the times were so fast! I guess stuff started flying that the course was short at that point as well. On the cool down I was pretty high. 5th man at 25:33, freshman under 26, the whole top 10 breaks 27, 10 men up 10 prs that's awesome stuff! I was really high on it.

Kinda went down hill from there though. Gabe had taped the finish and after watching it once we realized we didn't beat Wabash. Still hopeful for beating CMU and Allegheny though.

Coach came around and she had results up on her phone. We ended up 6th. Kinda a blow. It wasn't even close with Allegheny and CMU and we were 30 point behind Wabash. I guess coming in I thought we were better than this. We had 5 guys run in the mid to low 25's and we were only the third best team at this meet. It almost doesn't seem fair.

When it comes down to it we need to be better up front. You can't be a good team when you're first guy gives you 25 points. I don't care how packed your team is. Its just not good. Its basically scoring 4 against 5 with us vs. CMU and Allegney. They've got 2 or more in before they score as many as we have after 1. That's a huge hole to be in. And our 4 and 5 guys ran and are running awesome, but no matter how close they are to us, and they are really close, they can't make up that deficit. We have to be better up front if we're gonna compete with these teams Nationally.

All that aside this meet was very important to us. We found out were we are at compared to some of the better teams in the country. I think its good to have this going into conference. And we have barely done any quality work yet this year and when we put that quality work it it will help us tremendously. I'm sure at our next meeting with some of these teams we'll be in a very different place training wise than we were today.

Its time to go to work!