So XC came and went. My last post saw me at the height of my season as the last two meets weren't too great. Having a poor race at regionals was especially a bummer as I knew I was really fit. Bad race tactics is what did me in though. The whole season I had been taking the first mile out conservative and building into the race. It was normal for me to be in about 10th place on the team through the mile but then reel people in and finish somewhere 3rd-5th on the team. At regionals, for some crazy reason, I decided to change my strategy and go out hard the first mile with everyone else. My goal was to put myself in a good position so I could contend up front. It didn't quite work out that way... Because I wasn't used to go anaerobic so early in the race I tanked after the mile and never really recovered throughout the race. Another learning experience for sure. I had a lot of those in 2010.
After that I took a solid 2 weeks off with no training and then have just been playing around, having fun, working out sporadically since late November. I've worked out almost every day since then but it has been really random with no structure whatsoever. I start official workouts with coach Shelly tomorrow and am pretty excited to get back to some structure. I joined a swim team this spring and just had my second practice tonight. Ouch. My arms and shoulders are already feeling it big time. Luckily I'll only be swimming 4 nights a week with them. I'm tired of the swim being a continual weakness for me so I'm taking the best steps I know of to fix that.
I'm also starting my second semester of grad school, working 20 hours a week in the department and training on top of that so I should stay busy. Collegiate Nationals is April 9th so its time to get to work!
