haha take this with a grain of salt... i got a little carried away...

Ahh! I can't believe it's here already... my last season ever as a cross country runner! Man, it sneaks up on you! i think i might seem like some nazi obsessive runner at the moment... and maybe it's true hehe. But I won't lie, i've got a lot of wasted/injured time to make up for... There have been times i'm sure where i'm sure everyone wanted to punch me in the face for being so slow and retarded LOL. but right now I've got so much excitement built up, i just can't keep it locked up anymore!

oh, while i remember to say this: i hope you all find my random stories encouraging and not bragging, etc. it occurred to me recently that it might appear that way. but the real reason why i get so fanatical about running over the summer is because it's the only time of year where I have no stress, and I can be patient and not fret about a bad week or two of training. It's my time to build up confidence and excitement so when school starts and everything in my life gets turned upseide down, running can be my constant. If I do everything right over the summer, fall becomes just a matter of following through. Not to be confused with going through the motions -It's more like all the hard work has been done, all the decisions have been made already, all the planning is finished, so now i can have some fun, go crazy, etc. My goal is to spend the summer gathering momentum so that in the fall all i have to do is strap myself in and enjoy the ride.


More than anything though, i'm just super excited about what we can do this season. Last year's xc team made the transition from having a goal of winning regionals to having an expectation of destroying it. But this summer i've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get us to make another big leap. Our all american 5x8 during track season put Riddle on the map, but this fall, I really want to make people look. I want to show them who we are and what we stand for, and let them know we're not going anywhere. In the past, we've had a goal of "making a strong appearance at nationals". But I don't see that mentality getting us where we have the potential to go.

I guess though, It's easy for us to sit here and say we want to accomplish "x" goal. But it's quite another to have 10 girls wake up every morning for the next month and think about how each day will help make or break that goal. Since i struggle with this myself, i'm going to assume other people do as well. So I put a youtube video of the nationals course on the side panel. I'm hoping to use it not only for visualization purposes, but as a way to keep everything in perspective, knowing that nationals isn't this big scary thing, and it's not some abstract goal. it's real, it's tangible, and it's there for the taking. When we get there, we're going to be capable of doing some serious dammage. But then again, so are 30 other teams. And all of them training right now, all of them preparing for the same 20 minutues of the same exact day. The question is, when we get to that day, are we going to know deep down that we worked just a little bit harder, wanted it just a little bit more?

As far as I can tell, that remains to be seen.
We can kid ourselves all summer about our training, about our expectations. But once you hit the line at nationals, you either want it or you don't. And trust me, that's not a decision that can be made in november.