Burlington Meet

Tomorrow we have a meet at Burlington. This meet will be about 2 hours away. It is also the first year that we are going to this meet. I don't really know how to feel about it because it is so far away and the teams there are teams that we never compete against..or see for that matter. We will probably get out of school at 115. and will not be arriving back home till about 12 or the coaches say maybe even 2. This meet is also going to take a long time because it is Co-ed these meets always seem to last a lot longer because you have the boys heats then the girls heats. it adds up to am extra hour or two.
So for this meet i am not sure what i am running yet. But i am assuming it will probably something similar to what i always run. Which will be the 200, 4x100, 4x200 and the sprint med. I am hoping with all this fast speed work or "peaking" that we have been doing that maybe at this meet i will have a chance to get another pr. right now my time for the 200 is 26.7 i know i can get a low 26 that's not out of the question. I think it just needs to be in the right weather conditions outside and for me to be warmed up and ready to go. Which i know the weather is supposed to be getting nice so i don't know why there isn't a reason for me to because able to reach what i want.
At this meet we are hope to perform well over all as a team and maybe place first. There are a lot of teams going to be there that we have never seen before, but we have competed against many good teams and these teams are not as good as thoughts. I am really wanting to make coach happy and do well. So we will go for it and give it our all like we always do..good luck girls!!

if i had one wish

only if i had one wish. It wouldn't be the normal things people think of. My wish wouldn't to be the fastest person in the world, or take back stupid things i have done, people i hurt, or having the most money in the world. My one and only wish would be to have my mom back. she died in 2006. I think about her every day and wish she was here with me.
people have no clue what a mother does for them. Think about it even if they are not the best mom is the ideal mom you want well think of this. She does a lot of things for you without knowing it. When you had a hard day at school she is always there to back you up. You may get in fights and feel like you hate her sometimes, but in the end you have to love her. The Little things we all take for granted in life is what she does for you most of the time.
I feel like no one can replace that feeling. she loves you no matter what, if you get an F, come home drunk, or are pissed at her for no reason. There are so many thing that i wish i could have back. I have a step mom now. and she is nothing like my mom. she never understand me on my leave she talks way to much and i think she is fake. don't get me wrong i love her and she does a lot of things for me, but can never replace that special feeling a mom would give you. I know it is probably just a girl thing and guys i now you would feel the same with your dads. You have the special bond.
My one wish of having my mom back would be great. When she would ask if i want to go to the store with her i know i would say yes right away. i would take anything back to have extra time with her. She was someone that when you had a conversation with her you learned so much and only wanted the best for me and everyone around her. When i think back i wounder why she had cancer, i always ask why her?! she never did anything wrong she ate healthy exercised daily. but why ask why so much. things happen for a reason. in reality asking why just makes mad. With my wish i would have my mom there at all my track meets cheering me on. I know she would be on top of things at school making sure i have the best grades in class that i can get and be there to watch me grow up. I know she wanted to see that and it meant a lot to her. For m second wish i know it would be to be able to give that back to her. Let her come back and see where i am now and watch me grow up and be able to see me run at a track meet. These are things that people take for granted way to much. You my complain about having to make dinner for your family every night but do you really see what she is doing for you behind you back. Paying for your food you eat and maybe even your car insurance. So next time your going to go an get pissed at your parents for something take another look at life and your mom and see if its really worth it. people do so much in life for people and its the small things that add up. but i know it sucks no one ever notices it. think of what your one wish would be and if it is something reasonable. i know i would do anything to make that wish come true.

Peaking

Coach keeps talking all of this peaking crap lately. And i am sure that half of the girls on the team have no idea what he means by it. All they know is that at practice we are not running as much and the workouts are short and at 100%..so all out. what this does is when you get to the middle of the season or towards the end of you you have practices that will get your speed up and essentially make you run faster at meets. the reason you o this is because if you were to peak all season it wouldn't really work, you would ware your body down way to much. If you did workouts like that all season there would be nothing left in you..you would be going to meets getting slower times then you did in the beginning of the season. some people don't now its not worth pushing your athletes every practices and sucking all the juice out of them every day. and a day every now and then is never a bad thing. it lets your legs recover and your body recuperate. So all peaking really is when you wait a while (middle/end of season) and start to have better and faster times over all. I know of some coaches that doesn't believe in "peaking" they think it is all a joke and there is no point in it. i am sure that certain coaches have seen results in certain athletes. I know that it does seem like when i get to state i have faster splits or times. But this also could be because its good running conditions and that i am using my nevus to run faster in the race. we will just have to wait and see how every one else does on all of this peaking stuff. My coach seems to use the term a lot, we will see if it pays off in the end.

the results

Drake went well for the most part. the weather on the first day was great..and we were able to get a nice shorts tan line along with a farmers tan. The 2nd day was not as nice with cold and raining all day. at least it wasn't windy like before and the previous years.
The races i ran were the sprint med and the 4x1 like i have already told you. The first race the was Sprint med early Friday morning at 1030. Not that early but having to leave the hotel by 630 i would say is pretty early!! the sprint med we placed 6th in last year. But we didn't have the same 400 runner anymore she graduated last year and that hurt us in the end. We improved our time by two seconds over all though. we are almost at the same time we were at last year. we are only off by a second. I know if all of us work hard and when we peak we can do really well. and maybe even have a better time then last year. so for the 4x100. we were ranked 18th out of 80. i thought that was pretty good. But when it because time to run we got 5th in our heat out of 8 teams. and not going to lie we were in a good and fast heat so we could have done better and stayed up with the other teams. i think in the end we ended up placing worse then when we came it. another excuse i could come up with is we were in the sun all day and the race wasn't until 530. you don't notice until you go to run or do something physical but the sun really does suck more energy out of you then you think. over all i am very proud of how everyone perfored, I know ehn stake comes around in three weeks that we can knock everyone away and do better. They will not know what is coming for them..

Today we leave for drake..i am very excited. we leave at 4 o'clock and will make it into ames at about 6 o'clock. Our coach is taking up 9 different people. I think that is a good thing because some of them are seniors and haven't gotten to experience going to drake before. We also changed one of our 4x100 relay. we took someone that is a sophomore out and replaced her with a senior. Coach came to me and another girl asking permission to do this change. It really means a lot to us that he came to us first making sure that it was ok. And we decided that it would be fine to switch them out because the girl she was replacing is a senior and hasn't ran a drake before. It would be a good thing for her to see what it is like. They both have the same time so i think that it wouldn't be that big of a deal. and possibly make us even faster and get us into the finals for the 4x100. Right now we are ranked 18th and if we buckle down and run our fastest times at drake we can make it into the finals and possibly place. I think that would be amazing!!

I have been to drake all the years of my high school career..i have loved all of it. from the late nights in the hotel room, watching college teams run, going out to dinner, and just being crazy normally how everyone on our team is. It is always a great time and we will have thousands of pictures to put up on facebok. i am sure when i get back there will be many great stories to talk about and hopefully good news on how we placed.

We made it!!

Finally after waiting a long time seeing if we had made it in for the 4x100 and the sprint med we did!! i am overly excited to go to drake again. I am a little bummed i couldn't have made it in the open 100 but i never really ran it at any meets to qualify. I know that i would have made it to drake in the open 200,but one weird thing about drake is they don't have a girls 200 open or a 4x200. But they have both of these events for boys. I don't really understand why..and probably will never understand why they don't.

This is a big meet for drake this year. it will be the 100th annual year of the drake relays. This means that many Olympian runners will be there. I can not wait to be able to see some of these people run. They are people i look up to and probably can learn a lot from them. I know that watching them will truly be an amazing site to see. I can not wait!!

Now back to the running events. we have 3 total events going to drake. The 100 meter dash, 4x100, and sprint med. Right now for the sprint med we are ranked 23 out of 24. That just makes me want to work harder and show people that we are not worth such a low placing and can beat them out. last year we placed 5th in sprint med and received a metal honestly that would be amazing again but don't know if that is possible from the people that are gone from the team now. And for the 4x100 we are 18th out of 80..i would like to say that is pretty decent. I think that we can improve our time and maybe placing the top 10 hopefully. i think another metal from drake would be amazing too!!

Meet at home

Tomorrow we have our home meet. It is supposed to be at Kingston stadium, but we can't have it there because the football field is being re turfed. So we are having the meet held at Linn mars track. It is also a coe ed meet so you know that it is going to last forever!! In a way i am ok with that because it is a Friday night and i wouldn't have anything else to do if the meet got over earlier. I am also very excited for this meet because the weather is predicted to be very nice. They are saying that is going to be almost in the 70's tomorrow. I can not wait. Since we can't use this meet to qualify into drake because the time cuts offs were last night at midnight I am looking at this meet to get PR's ion my relays and open events. Last meet I got a PR in my open 200. My previous Pr was 26.9 and my time on Tuesday was 26.71!! I was very excited this this time and had worked hard for it. I know that i can bring my time down even more if i would hard and practice and give everything my all. This meet I am not sure on what i will be running i do know for sure i will be running the 4x100, sprint medley and the 4x200. It all depends on what coach wants to put me in, the 100 or 200. We can also look at this meet as preparation for Drake and trying to cut down our times even more so we can have a great time at Drake and maybe even place in the 4x1. Right now for the $x100 we are placed at about 12th, i think we can improve on that and do better. We just need to get our hand offs perfect and be prepared.

Cedar Falls

Last night we had a rather successful meet. I am not for sure on what our team placed over all, but i know that we didn't get 5th place!! i am pretty sure that we got 4th over all which would make me very happy and show that we can actually step it up. But you also have to consider the competition that was there. there 8 teams there total and none of them were all that good. All of the teams had a few strong people on their team, but take them out and they didn't have a team.

As for how my relays and events went, we did great!! the first race was the 4x200. i felt like i wasn't ready for this race for some reason..it was weird i warmed up just how i always do and still didn't feel like my legs where ready to go. It think it may be because i didn't run a stride like i always do before i run and that could have had a big factor on why i didn't run so well. When i went to run i came out of the blocks ok but when i got to the last 50 meters i died..i never die! The next race i had was the open 200. i was in the 2nd heat for varsity and was a bit nervous because i had to run against this girl from Cedar Falls that i always seem to be running against. I ended up placing 1st in my heat and 4th over all. I was very happy with these results. For the 3rd race i had was the sprint med. It was the race we had been waiting for all night. we had a different person running the 400 and someone replacing her running the 100. We were all nervous, but Ashley (the 400 runner) was the most nervous of all. we had to ensure her that everything was going to be ok and she was going to beast it. And that she did..we all had spots that we were going to be at cheering her on around the track. she ran a 62, that is great for someone who has never run the 400 in their life before. we are going got drake in the sprint med because of her!! The last race of the night was the 4x1. We placed 2nd. improved our time..it was a great day with every relay doing as god as they did!!

Tomorrow we have a meet at Cedar falls. I am a little bit nervous for this meet. Like i have said before it is our last meet o qualify in anything before Drake. Now that most of the relays are set and stone and there are going to be no changes made to them i am excited, but still a bit nervous. The reason it makes me so scared is because we have all the same runners in the 4x1, 4x2 and the sprint med. And Coach thought it would be a good idea to have one of our good 200 runners convert into a 400 runner. So at tomorrows meet she will be running the 400 for the first time in her life. She has never ran one besides two times in practice. It makes me really scared but i know that she can do it if she sets her mind to it and run it right. I am just hoping she doesn't stiffen up and die about out half way through..because i now if i was running the 400 that is what would happen to me. And i would feel horrible for the team. This is our last chance to make it into drake in the sprint med. I know we can do it if our time goes down. the last meet we cut off 4 seconds, with a different runner we could cut off another 4 seconds!!

in this meet i will be running my usual and what i like to run. the 200, 4x2, 4x1 and the sprint med. I am excited to run the 200 in good weather ( well the forecast says it is supposed top be good) and see what my time will be. I know that good competition will be there so they can only push me to run my hardest which is good. they will make me work for it. and with out 4x1 we have a good time going into drake, but at our last meet we cut off at least 2 seconds and i know with a little bit more motivation that we can cut off more time. Then when we do come to run at drake we can show them what we can do, and maybe even place. I think that would be amazing. We placed last year at drake in the sprint med so i now that we can make it a reality and not just think of it as being something cool.

DRAKE??

all we know for sure about going to drake is our 4x100 team. we don't know if we are going to make it into any other events. I am sure that we can actually i know that we can. If you saw our team workout and see how badly someone of us really want to do well and make it drake and state. last year we placed in drake and i would love to do that again. it was such a great feeling to tell people i placed at drake..to me that is a big deal!! the other two things that i am hoping to make it to drake in is the sprint medley and the open 100 meter dash. I know that our sprint medley team can make it. we have some amazing people on our team that have the drive to want to improve and show our coach what this team is really made of. And i think that is what we are doing and what we are going to do when more people make it in for individual events and more relays make it. I know that we can do it. But then again i can get really nervous about all of this when i think that there is only one more meet that we have in order to qualify and make the trip up to drake.
The meet is next Tuesday. It will be at cedar falls. The last 2 years we have been at Cedar Falls it had been unbelievably windy and very cold out. i am just hoping that the meet that is our last chance for people to make it into things isn't cold and windy. But i would like to think that the weather doesn't matter and we can make it in anything and to a point i know that is true. Also this next post i hope it is telling all of you how well we did and how i made it to drake in the open 100 and sprint med improved our time by even more and have a good spot and standing at drake.

J-Hawk Invitational

Today we had a rather important meet. I didn't run the 200 like i thought i was going to run. I ended up running the 100 meter dash instead. My coach said the reason for this was because the 200 dash was to close to the sprint medley relay and he wanted me with some what fresh legs for that race because it was one of the most important one of the day. I felt like overall the whole team did really good. the weather was awesome and i couldn't have asked for anything better!! It was about 60 degrees outside with no little to no wind..like i said, perfect. We ended up placing 5th again. some how it seems in every meet no matter what we always get 5th place.

For my races and how i did, over all i would say that i ran pretty good. My 100 i got 7th place over all. i would have liked to do better. I do feel like i ran this 100 more relaxed and not as tensed up which is very good. in The 4x2 we placed 2nd. It was a very tight race at the end but we puled it off and got 3nd. i was very proud and impressed. The sprint med was a very exciting race. We all were pumped and ready to run it. With a new person in for the 400 hoping to improve our time on the relay over all. I want to say we got 3rd place, but i am no positive on that. For the last race of the day which was the 4x1. i felt good and ready for this race knowing it was the last one and the meet was almost over i think we all left everything on the track knowing we could do good. We placed 1st!! it was good to see us finishing in 1st knowing how much we wanted it and how much we had worked for it.

So we have yet another meet on Saturday. I feel like its never in ending in meets and that we never have a break!! But don't get me wrong i love having meets they are fun and you can show everyone what you or your team can do. It is also a great feeling you get when you actually do good in a race and you get recognized for it. This meet that we have on Saturday is at Linn mar. I was originally going to be held at Kingston but with all the new renovations they are doing it can't be held there anymore. i have never ran on Linn mars track and am kind of nervous to. My feeling is that is is not going got be that soft of a track meaning that it is going to be hard and not really have much push for you to get started and have push with your foot.

This meet i will be running an open 200, 4x200, sprint medley and the 4x100. I am glad to be running the 200 again and not the 100 because of how badly i did last time and how upset i was with my time. Recently we talked to our coach about improving our time on the sprint med. He said that he was already one step ahead of us in putting someone else for the 400. i think that doing this will make the time for the sprint medley a lot better and maybe not 12 seconds slower then we were last year.

another thing that i am excited for this meet is that is going to be a little warmer. And it will also be during the day with means that it will stay warm and not get colder as the meet goes on. One one main goal in this meet or this year it is to beat Xavier in the 4x100 or the 4x200. it would make my day or even year to know that we worked hard for it and have that satisfaction of beating them. I think that we can do it!! I am really excited for this meet to see how we place and am hoping for a better place over all.

Iowa City West Meet

I was right this last meet on Tuesday was one of the coldest meets that i have been to. In order to get warm i had to run four laps which is a mile and stretch, but by the time i was done stretching half the time i was cold again. The team over all ended up placing 5th place. sometime this year i want to place better then 5th. In my mind i think of that as failing. We can improve on many things that will make us place higher up.
This time a team mate and i switched individual events that we usually run. So i ran the 100 meter dash and she ran the 200 meter dash. After running this 100 i decided that the 200 is more of my thing and I'm not a big fan of running 100s anymore. It was my first race of the night and i know that is no excuse to do bad, but it was part of the reason. Another factor that i had to take into consideration was that it was only about 30 degrees outside. I didn't feel like i was loose and ready to go..this is all my fault not warming up good enough. I ended up placing 3rd out of 8. that's not horrible, but still that is not the place i would prefer to get.
Now for my other two races that i ran. The other two where the 4x200 and the 4x100. In these events we ended up placing 3rd once again. 3rd place just doesn't fly in my book because i know we can earn and work for that 2nd or even first place spot. we all had very good legs, but i think if we were to replace out 3rd leg runner with someone faster we would have a team that is better. oh well i guess we will have to wait and see what happens this next meet!!

Tomorrows meet

So we have a meet tomorrow in iowa city. It is going got be cold out and also a co-ed meet, which means that it is going to last very long!! So by the end of the night i know that we will all be freezing and wanting to go home to a nice warm bed.

Tomorrow i will be running the 100 meter dash, 4x100 and 4x200. the reason i am only running in three different events is because coach told me he didn't want to over work us and have our legs be tired out for another meet that we have on Saturday. It just seems like every other day we have another meet. they are never ending almost! I am a little disappointed that i don't get to run in the sprint med but the usual team that runs it isn't going got be running it, because we want "fresh legs" for the more important meet on Saturday. still i think all these weather they are big or not are important because drake is within two weeks away and we need to have as many chances as we can to be able to qualify for drake in any meet. But i guess coach is usually right so we will see how tomorrow goes and then how Saturday goes as well. But i am also very excited to run the 100. it is a short and fast race. i have only ran a 60 meter dash this year and did well in it..so running a 100 will be fun and very exciting to see how it will turn out.

Xavier Invitational

Our last meet was held at Xavier this last Friday. It was our first outdoor meet and i was very excited for it. The one thing that i wasn't looking forward to was the coldness from being outside and how windy it was going to be. I don't mind it being cold but when it turns windy there are so any other factors you don't think about that you have to worry about..things like running right into the wind and worming up earlier because the cold weather and wind makes your muscles ten times more cold.

In this meet we ended up placing 5th over all..we were hoping to get 1st. that really didn't happen. There were many girl from school that just came out of no where. But if we look back on the meet we didn't do too bad because we had many people get PRs (personal records) and perform very well. I ended up running my four usual events. The 4x2, 200, sprint med and the 4x1. In the 4x2 we did end up getting first place by something like .02. Still beating the other school by that makes me feel good and shows them that we can really work for it and push for what we want. The next race i ran which was the 200, i ended up getting 2nd place. I was kind of upset with my time. I had a time of 27.4 and i know i can do better then that. I have ran a 26 before. I guess i will have to think positive and hope my time will come soon. Now for the 3rd race of the night, the sprint med. We didn't do so how in this race we have been trying to figure out who would be a good 400 runner. so ever meet we have always had someone different. The thing is last year we had a time of 1:50 and this year our time is 2:02..just a bit of a different having a strong 400 runner does. I am not for sure, but i think we ended up getting 5th in this race. Now for the final and last race of the cold and windy night was the 4x1. We were all very excited to run this race we only had 100 meters to run we were all fast and ready to dominate!! The team placed 2nd. We had a hard battle for 1st or 2nd at the end of the race. it was so close but we still did a great job!!
good job girls and can't wait for the next meet on Tuesday!!

Qualifying for Drake

To me the Drake relays are a big deal. All high Schools in Iowa compete to qualify for it. And even once you are in colleges they compete to get into to it.. we are not competing against each other but still everyone around the united states tries to go to Drake. So i seem to think that it can be a big deal. ever since freshman year i have gone to it. my first year we ran in 2 events, the 4x100 and the sprint medley. I still remember the meet we were at and trying to make the cut off time for the sprint med to get into drake. It was a meet here in town held at Kingston. I was running the First leg of the relay so after i ran i stood there yelling at the relay team and staring at the clock. Our 400 runner Nicole had just gotten the baton and we were doing very good..i knew she could catch us up even more and make us receive the cut off time. When we were done running i looked up and we had cut at least 3 or 4 seconds off of our time!! we had qualified. the teams came together jumping up and down so happy that we had made it. the nest year Trying to qualify for drake seemed to be easier because we had the same relay team as the year before, so therefore we had already worked together and knew what it took. last year we made in the same events (4x100 and the sprint medley). last year for the sprint medley we even placed. We ran and got 5th place out at 30 teams..at the drake relays!! i am hoping this year we can do the same thing and maybe even get 4th place.
this year i am hoping to make it into Drake for the 4x1000 and the sprint med. i think since i have only qualified for the same 2 events every year that i should try and make it for a third one this year. I was thinking about an open event, like the open 200 or the 100. i know it might be hard and take a lot of time and effort to do it, but i know if i put all of that in i can achieve it in the end.

Workouts

Theses last couple weeks of track we have been doing workouts that will get us into outdoor shape and ready for the outdoor season to start. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday are our hardest workouts of the week. he last couple weeks for the "hard days" we have usually ran five 200's at 85 90%. Sometimes running that workout really gets to me. for this last week we run our 200 walk back half way and then jog the rest of the way back to our starting line and start up right again. this can be really tiring sometimes because seeing how you get no chance to catch your breath in between reps. But i know in the long run these workouts are really going to pay off and help me improve my time by a lot. I know it seems that only running five 200's seems like nothing, but it really can be a lot if you think about it..especially for a sprinter.

Now for the easy days on Tuesday and Thursdays..What we usually do on these days is go for a "nice and easy" 2 mile run. Coach says it is to shake everything out and to help us recover faster. Sometimes i think there are other things that we could do that would benefit us better then a 2 mile run. lets think about it at a meet we don't even run 2 miles total. usually at a meet i only run 600 meters. i can understand how it can help us become stronger and help us have more endurance, but i know there has to be other ways we could build it up. i trained with a trainer for pre season track and he said it wasn't necessary for us to run over 300 meters at any point in the season. i really don believe that this is true. Ohh well i will live with running 2 miles and i know that it will just make me better overall. i sure hope so!!