Yesterday was the first real race of the season, and in a way it was glorious. After a boring bus ride to Aurora in Illinois, we piled out and explored a (terrible) course that consisted of repeated concrete, hard-packed dirt roads and rutty woods with no hills. The start line was possibly the worst I've ever seen. It was angled AWAY from the actual course so that anyone who ran straight would enter a large pond. There wasn't any real straightaway at the start, just an immediate left turn. Despite all the nightmarish course conditions it turned out to be a fun event. Russ led us all through a sort of meditative ritual before we unloaded the bus and also calculated pace times for everyone to shoot at. During the actual race most of us managed to stick to our mile paces and a lot of both men and women were able to bust out negative splits. My monster came out for the final 2 miles and I believe many of my teammates felt the same. Sam and Ash ended up winning medals and several of the new recruits did pretty well for their first races. A couple people did not have good days but they have nothing to worry about since this first race counts for little if anything.
This morning we ran at Pike Lake again. I didn't roll my ankle this time, but holy crap am I sore from last night. It's a great feeling. It means I'm getting stronger.
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