Aisling Cuffe's MileSplit.us Journal #3
Hello again! I feel like I haven’t written a journal in a very long time, just because so much has happened over the last 2 weeks. Great American definitely feels like more than 2 weeks ago, and Manhattan was definitely not just last week. The season is going by so fast! Before I know it, the New York state meet will be right around the corner…
Starting where I left off in my last journal, I will write about my amazing experience at Great American. With this being my third year of cross country, there aren’t many courses that my team goes to that I haven’t seen before. This course was one of those rare exceptions. But that didn’t matter, because I loved the course! I almost didn’t want to go home! The ground was an odd, solid, slightly wet clay, that almost felt like pavement, except your spikes would dig in very well. The course was not at all flat like I had thought, with the long hill by the 2k/finish area, and the two hills at 3k and 2 miles. In hindsight, my teammates and I should have given the course more respect than what we had the few days before seeing it. The woods area reminded me of Van Cortlandt Park, except without the numerous hills and the crushed stone. The hill leading up to the finish was very long, but manageable. The course was a little tougher than the average “flat as a pancake” course, but the terrain forced you to run fast. I was very pleased with my time, as I had never broken 17 minutes in the cross country 5k (my closest ever was 17:00.1… soo cruel). Throughout the course, people had been calling out all sorts of times, with scary ones like “you’re on 17 flat pace!” when I had 300m to go, or “you’re at 13:50” at the 4k mark, which would have implied that my last 1k split was 2:50, which wouldn’t be too shabby… if it wasn’t completely unrealistic. Needless to say, when I saw the clock stop at 16:40, I was very happy. I greatly exceeded my time goal, and broke the course record by a large margin. This race really made the trip worth it.
The week of training between Great American and Manhattan was mostly uneventful. It was rushed, trying to fit in recovery time from the last race, solid training for mid season, and a mini-taper for Manhattan. For the time they were given, my coaches really made things work. Coming into Manhattan, I was feeling ready for anything. I was excited to see some familiar New York faces in my race, as well as race on a course that I hadn’t seen in a year, but could remember like the back of my hand. I was very happy with the results. I broke 14 minutes, which was one of my basic goals for the race, but sadly, I missed the record by 3 seconds. Even the girls behind me got fast times, with Jillian Fanning breaking 14:20, and Haley Pierce and Katie Sischo breaking 14:30. These times are always at the cream of the crop in every year’s Eastern’s race, so you know the race was a good one. With the days that followed the meet, there was a lot of talk about the course being long, which was agonizingly painful to listen to, knowing I only missed the record by 3 seconds. But I am over that now. The only reason the course could have been long was due to the fact that it was a modified course, which just re-iterates the fact that I could not have gotten the true course record anyway (even though just beating the time would have been cool…). But that’s life, and you have to move on.
The past week has been as relaxing as a week of running can be. I have gotten my mileage back up to where it was in the summer (I never really “peaked” with mileage in the summer, I am just trying to keep things consistent). I have survived through tough, insane, and cruel workouts, that only conniving people can come up with (they weren’t really that bad, I am just trying to throw guilt at the unsympathetic souls of my coaches! They actually made my team do a complete hill workout in the middle of a tempo workout! How dare they…)
And here I am now, on the weekend. I didn’t race in the invite that my team went to on Saturday, but I got to see my sophomore teammate win her first ever cross country race, after saying the day before that she never wins(the same girl who complained how she never broke 20 minutes in a cross country race, hours before getting 19:05 at Great American)! Go Michelle!
That is all for now. See you guys later!
My teammates and I during our 3 hour, 30 minute delay in Newark Airport(after arriving with 2 hours to spare, resulting in a grand total of 5 and a half hours in an airport), before flying down to Great American. We found numerous ways to entertain ourselves. If only we had one of these on our cross country course…
After dinner on Saturday evening, 6 of us attempted the ultimate jumping picture, with Elena manning my camera… after many tries before and after, this one came out the best.
Me standing with the Ironton XC team, whose entire squad were doing great all morning long, as their names were always on the loudspeaker!