Vanguard Invitational

Sat. Oct. 6, 2007

Woke up at 5:15am, which was not as sweet as it sounds, to eat my 4 egg omlett with boccoli and chicken and toast with honey and a banana. The race today is in Costa Mesa, which is like 45min-hour south of Redondo.
Got down there like 75 min before the race, and just hung out. Looked at the course, and was not that impressed. It was primarily in a desert, but apparantly Native Americans used to live here, so that was nice to know. It was an 8k that made a bunch of loops throughout this area, with one STEEP 70ish meter hill that we had to run twice. Well I am going to start off by saying that I quit the race after mile 3. It sucks starting a race when you do not want to be there and have been having a really hard couple of weeks prior to the race. Anyways, we started at 9 am and went through the mile in 4:58, which was very comfortable. The race was pretty much a pack of 5 of us, 3 of us from VS. We went through 2 miles in about 9:50, so about 4:52 second mile. I felt very comfortable but just was having bad thoughts and didn't want to be running anymore. We went through 3 miles in a little over 15 minutes, we had hit that hill in this mile, and it was a SLOW hill. So then I proceeded to quit, but Ozzie on my team go 2nd, losing in a kick at the end, which says something about the other runner, cause Ozzie has a GOOD finish. They were both around 24:50 for the 8k. Then Matt on out team was at 25:30.
I had a long talk with my team and coach and let them know the feelings and thoughts that I have been having lately, and although there is never an excuse for not finishing, I used it. I think after talking to my team, things will get better for me out here. Then we concluded with a big meal at IHOP....we dominated that Pancake house.

8 miles today