Maine State XC Championships 11/02/09 - 11/08/09

The 2009 Maine XC season is almost over with only New Englands left (which I just BARELY made)! I can still remember everything just starting off with the Cony Laliberte Invitational. It seems like a long time ago, but the memories are still very fresh. The state meet has come and gone and, truthfully, I didn't make my time or place goals for the meet at all (not even close really). But I have decided to use my frustrated-ness to finish my XC season on a high note at New Englands and train hard going into indoor track to kick some butt! I am pretty annoyed with my post-season but every time I think about it I get a little more fired up for later races.

My training the week of states really wasn't much. It really just included easy runs and an easy speed workout on the track.

The class B race began at 1:15 in the afternoon but my day of states really started at 7:00 when I got up and ate honey-nut cheerios for breakfast. Our school had decided to take a bus down to bring anyone down who wanted to watch the meet. It had been decided that the bus was going to leave at 8:15, so that's when I was going to have to be there. The reason for the early time was so Eben and I could run the course before the "A" races started. I had only ever seen the course once and Eben hadn't seen it at all. The bus ride down went as usual. We all just listened to music and danced/partied on the bus.

When we got the I admit that I got pretty nervous. This definitely isn't unusual at a big meet for me, but I hadn't felt that nervous for a while so it just seemed weird. Eben and I ran over the course and hung around watching the other races. People were running so fast! As our race time approached we did some more warming up and eventually got down to the starting line. The start actually felt really good. It was, of course, fast but it wasn't bad at all. Then Frye started to take off and from there everybody started chasing and things stretched out.

I felt ok at the beginning of the race but pretty soon I started feeling my energy drain, a feeling that you don't normally get until about 400m to go. It just felt like there was no gas. Logan Price came up next to me for a while and I used him to push up for a little while.

After he pushed away I was running alone for quite a while. I couldn't really see people all that close in front of me and I couldn't hear people behind me (yet). After I climbed the wall at the end Tim Follo caught up to me and I tried to reach for that end of the race push but came up empty. I just kinda watched him run away from me. Here's me looking tired at the end:

Eben did have a pretty good race, however. Considering the course he ran to a very strong time in 17:44. He doesn't look to bad in his pictures:

Nicole Showed up to the meet and made me feel better and people tried to cheer me up and it helped but I was still pretty bummed. I really wasn't sure if I had made New Englands after the B race so I had to stay around and see the C race. As it turns out I was 23rd out of 25 so I made it but was really close. Now I have another meet to take out my XC-sub-par-post-season-rage on! Yes that is all one word!

But really XC season was great this year. The team grew quite a bit and everyone ran a lot of times that they were very happy with.

Next week!!! The (heroic) end to XC! I have already decided that NE's will be great! Good luck to all racers. Make it good!