Running to most people is one of the worst things imaginable. When they have to run in gym class they always whine and complain. Whenever someone is in a non-running sport talks about a hard conditioning workout they did in practice it almost always involves running. My sport is every sports punishment and I enjoy it. I am very competitive during races and love the feeling of them. I have never felt better than Regionals of last year during the 800m run. It was the best race of my life and I felt more like a champion than any other races before.
People don’t realize how much goes into running. They ask me how I run so fast and I look back to every time they didn’t agree with something I was doing like, going to bed early, and eating healthy, and training right. And then they want to argue with me every single time they didn’t race well and they wonder why they can’t beat me. So to prepare for the best race you have to focus on what you are doing the day before and the day of competition. I hydrated throughout both days, ate a nice, big, healthy meal, and got plenty of rest the day before. We always get breakfast and leave school at nine in the morning on the day of regionals so I got a nice, big meal so I didn’t have to eat until my race. On the ride there I tried to get extra sleep and continued to hydrate. When we arrived there our distance team all went under the bleachers like always at MCC where it was dry and quiet. We always stay there because the tent is crowded and people in there always fool around and waste their energy. Sounds like a lot of stuff to pay attention to, right? That’s just the day of competition, you have no idea how much work I put in the offseason to get this far.

I put in four full months of running every single day to train for track in the snow, hail and below freezing weather. On speed days I ran 20 hills at full sprint of all heights and lengths. On long days I ran anywhere from 10 to 12 miles and every single other day in between I ran five or six miles. Altogether that winter I ran somewhere between 500 and 700 miles so now you can see why when you have a bad race it can ruin the rest of your week. It is so stressful to keep it together after doing all of these things and then not competing well. So that day of regionals was not a day to mess around; I wasn’t going to just waste all of that training in one day.

Our region was notorious for being the fastest in the state in all events, especially the 800. I am not exaggerating when I say that because I have looked up results. Our state is also one of the fastest in the nation and has the second most athletes behind only California. I was also running with another person from our team who was a senior with a 2:03 pr. He was going for the school record of 2:00 and also planning to go to state. They take the top two in each region and anyone who can run a 2:02. I honestly was doubting myself and didn’t think I could qualify. My PR at that time was around a 2:05 as a relay split, which in the 800 three seconds is a lot more than you think. We always start a light warm up 45 minutes to an hour before our race. We started warming up with some light jogging, then stretching, and then a dynamic warm up, always in that order. We always put our spikes on 15 minutes before and keep our warm ups on until the last five minutes before our race.

The whole day before an important race is so nerve racking it is unbelievable, and then the 10 minutes leading up to a race are almost unbearable. For once I was finally in the fast heat because I usually smoke everyone in the slow heat. So we jog up to the starting line, I got the first lane, second row right behind the number one ranked 800 runner in the state. I was going to try and stick with him. I was so nervous and I didn’t want the gun to go off, but of course it did anyway.

Now, honestly I don’t remember much from this race because of all the adrenaline, but I will try the best I can. I remember it was slightly chilly with a misty rain, but that’s why we warmed up, so we wouldn't freeze up. I also remember starting off about in the middle of the pack. The first lap is usually just a warm up, I vaguely remember hitting a 59-60 split. The second lap is where it gets hard, it’s where you got to start kicking it in. I was in maybe 10th place on the back stretch and kicked it in because I knew I probably couldn’t catch those guys in the last 100 meters. I stayed in the same position around the last corner and maintained it until the finish. When I finished, all I remember thinking was how fast that race went; I didn’t remember it even then. In running, the best races are the ones where you zone out and just run; that was one of those races. I finished in 6th place, which was insane for a sophomore, but I didn’t know my time, all I knew was that it was going to be close to make it to state. I estimated my time to be a 2:03 and later found out that it was officially 2:02.84. I had missed state by less than a second.

That race taught me a lot about myself and about my future. Now I am pretty much guaranteed to break the school record next year; I only have three seconds left to take off. I wasn’t really bummed about missing state because of that reason and because I did a lot better than I thought I would. Now I would train even harder to break more school records, like maybe the 400 or 1600. This race really changed my life because it panned out to me how good I could really be if I kept pushing myself. My goal now is to be state champ in the 800 this year and qualify for the Midwest Meet of Champions and hopefully place well.