Rumbly

So about that mile race I posted about a couple weeks ago... Ha. I never have time for anything. That race was damn fantastic, though. I had gone into that meet undecided between running the mile/800 or the 3k/800. I've been wanting to try the 3k for a while, because it seems like an interesting race.. however the mile and my un-met goals for the season were calling my name too loudly... (even though everyone'd been teasing me about how stupid I am running the mile every damn weekend).

In any event it was a good decision- not only because of how "good" the mile field was but how crappy the 3k field was (only two girls ended up racing the 3k).

The mile had about 5 girls seeded ahead of me, while I had seeded myself at 5:25. I thought this was good because I was finally getting some competition. I went out like usual, got ahead of everyone for a lap until the faster girls realized I wasn't savvy with their sick 5-flat pace (even though the first 209 had been :39). When they bull-rushed me I knew I had to tack on with them or I wasn't going to PR and I wasn't going to be where I wanted to be. Thus my second 200 was the fastest I've run all season for a 400, it was :37 low.

I tacked on but I couldn't keep their pace. I tried to keep MY pace though and Brittany was yelling splits extremely helpfully - 40 40 40 40 40404040400404040404040!

Not really all 40s, but that was my most even mile all season, also. at the half I was at 2:36 (!!!!) which was roundabout some first-halfs of my early 1500s from last season. I was pleased. Dallas was yelling "you're at sub 5:20 pace!!" and I was grimacing and maintaining those pretty splits (39 37 40 40 40 41 40 37). I caught close to the tail end of some ladies who had gone out hard with the lead nutters (they ran 5:02 or so) and couldn't keep that pace. Made me feel good about my pace-work, but also looking at the splits, it appears I could have pushed a little harder towards the end.

The only thing I could say when I finished and walked away from that line was "Finally!" and was I beat.. (it's hard work racing a sub-5:20 mile, apparently). But I am so amazingly pleased that my mile PR is finally closer to my damn 1500-mile equivalent of 5:11... It's great that I ran the equivalent of a 5:00 1500 already. I'm excited for next week when we open our season at Oshkosh.

That was a nice day. After a couple more races we went out into the nice woodsy areas around the SP campus for a moderate run.

That night I went to a party I shouldn't've, and I twisted my ankle. I couldn't walk on it for a few days so my training for the whole week was botched and I was concerned about my season in general. I had never had a sprained ankle before. I knew I had to take it easy but I couldn't afford that week off of training. I did a workout later in the week and the pain has, luckily, gradually decreased over the past two weeks.

I went down to Champaign-Urbana for my required court date. I should call it a royal screwing, because it wasn't justice. That place was absurd, disallowed cell phones and required a metal detector. They also required me to drink water out of my water bottle to ensure I wasn't bringing some hazardous chemical into the courthouse. Ensuing such folly was an hour of drab court room trash in which I sat through an obscene amount of stupid peoples' court decisions. I don't understand people who drive without a license, I don't understand people who leave the scene of an accident, or don't fasten their children in safety seats, or the myriad other offenses I had to sit through.

Then I got called up, asked if I understood my charge, (failure to yield), asked if I had any other traffic tickets from the past five years. Great. I did, 4.5 years ago when I first got my license, this bitch cop pulled me over in front of my high school to make an example, saying that I didn't stop at a stop sign when I had HAD to stop at the stop sign.

This meant that this was my second offense failure to yield, something I hadn't even thought about before. This also meant that I was fucked.

She then asked me if I had anything to say, so I said some random babble because courts intimidate the hell out of me and I hadn't thought ahead of time that I would get any say, so I hadn't thought of a tactical argument to make. So I babbled I was not familiar with the intersection, had been at a track meet all day, had wanted to get home because it was my birthday, and a bunch of random shit.

Two seconds later she announced that what had been a $75 ticket had been increased to a $250 ticket. I was livid but decided to just pay the ticket in lieu of trying to figure it out later.

I went to the payment clerk and she went away to run the final costs... which made me nervous. She came back stating, "Ok. $456."

"WOAH, What?"

"Yes, those are court fees," she said extremely nonchalantly. Because as we all know, everyone in the world has money to pay $200 in court fees tacked on to an obscene ticket. Are you fucking kidding?

Needless to say that was a ridiculous experience... I don't even know. I'm just looking forward to spring break now because I am incredibly sick of school and everything else. Coaching's going fine I guess, I feel like I've fallen into this state of not doing much but maybe that's because I'm busy with so many other things simultaneously.

Which reminds me, I saw my first ACL tear on Saturday at football practice. I'm not sure I'm allowed to discuss who it was, because I don't think it is public information yet, so I won't. But it was after the play had ended and he got his cleat stuck in the turf and crumpled to the ground instantly.

Soon after we had an MCL and earlier in practice we had a SLAP lesion occur which I am sad that I missed out on. Luckily his injury had warranted the on-call doc to be called in, which was very useful for immediate diagnosis of the MCL and the ACL which occurred later. Everyone else was falling all over the place and bleeding everywhere.. it was a huge mess. I'm really going to miss the hockey boys..


Oh and check out my friend's senior thesis. She goes to MIAD and is an amazing artist!