Cedar Falls Meet and Around the Lake

As of recently, cross country has been going pretty well. The practices are still very demanding in terms of endurance but I can tell that I am becoming a better runner which is what I am striving to do. The beginning of the week went well, although I cannot remember exactly what we did at practice. On Thursday we had a big cross country meet in Cedar Falls. The course is a very nice course and I have run it before so I knew it pretty well. Once we got there and ran the course, we realized they had changed it a little bit, but for the most part it was the same and I was excited to run it. Although I have only run the course once, I can remember my freshmen year when varsity ran districts on the course and received third place which qualified them for the state meet. As it got closer for my time to race I got a little nervous but I was still excited. I ran my race and it went pretty well, it wasn’t the best time I have ever gotten but it was better than last week. When we were done we all got subway sandwiches which were really good. I had to leave a little bit early though because I had to make it back to Kennedy in time for marching band practice. As a whole our team did very well. One of the girls on the freshman/sophomore team got 1st place in the race which is a really amazing accomplishment. On Friday we got right back to work preparing for our next meet, which is on next Thursday. Unfortunately, it was a distance day and we had to run 7.3 miles. At the beginning of the run it was painful because my legs hurt and all I could think about was how in the world am I going to make it over 7 miles like this? When I made it to the 3 mile mark all I could think about was the fact that I was only half way there. Surprisingly though, it got better. My legs started to feel better and I had the prospect that I was headed back to Kennedy. With that going for me, the second half of the run ended up being pretty enjoyable even though it was really hot. When we run 7.3 miles we most commonly call it the run around the lake. This is because we start from Kennedy and we run down to a lake that is near Quaker Oats on the trail. Once we get there we run around the lake and then head back to Kennedy. It isn’t exactly the most scenic route because the lake is located downtown which is pretty dirty. Nevertheless, I made it around the lake and I felt very accomplished and relieved when I was back at Kennedy.