I’m going to smoosh my entire cross country race adventures into one blog versus separate it for the two days that we were away, aka Friday and Saturday.

We left school at about 10am.  The bus ride was actually rather enjoyable; I mostly talked to the coach the entire time and watched a movie.  I did a little bit of homework but lucky for me I don’t have very much this weekend.  The life of a math major.  You either have homework-or you don’t.  There aren’t long term projects ha.

After we got to the race course around 2:30-one of my teammates Mallory and I went and jogged the it together.  For females it is a 6k and males an 8k.  6k is such an odd distance but then again who said swimming 1650 yards isn’t strange either?  The course has one big hill (which you get to go up twice YAY) ,lots of grassy turns and lots and lots of mud.  It is located on an airfield, that during heavy rainstorms floods.  Can you say muddy?

After jogging the course, we went and checked into the hotel.  We ended up going to Applebee’s for dinner.  I had the Cajun Lime Tilapia and baked potato.  I highly recommend it.  I was going to get Salmon but they were actually out.  I was okay with it though-I just needed some sort of fishy protein.

The girl’s team decorated sports bras for our big race that night.  I tried to draw each of the girls on the back.  You can tell I’m obviously an art major.  If you can’t tell-the one front and center with the most beautiful hair is my travel roomie Sharice.

Artistic Skills of a Champion

The Front!

Then it was off to bed for me.  I stayed up until about 11!  Can you believe that, grandma Hollie up at such a late hour?  I also got to sleep in until 7:30.

For breakfast, the five dollar cost got us unlimited French toast, fruit (strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, melons) cereal, coffee, eggs and bacon.  It was worth it by any means.  It was actually the best 5 dollars I have spent in a while.

Then it was off to the race.  The boys raced 8k and the girls 6k.  The boys were first at 11 and we were second (boo) at 12.  We had to be at the race line 20 minutes early though or we were automatically disqualified.

348 Men tearing up the course

We got the unlucky draw of box number one.  For anyone who doesn’t know, in this instance box 1 is probably the worst “box.”  Each of your team members are positioned in this box.  A painted box on the ground.  Box forty essentially means you get to run in a straight line for the first 400 meters.  Box one means you have to cut across about 200 feet during the first 400 meters.  You are essentially running at a very steep angle.  Long story short it probably adds about 20 seconds to your time but there isn’t much you can do.  Luck of the draw was not on our side I suppose. Lucky for us, box number 3 were the national champions.  The boys had box number eleven.

At least it was pretty.

All the Single Ladies. Can you spot me?

The actual race course was rather brutal.  The boys had raced first and all 348 of them had done their part to tear up the course.  It was extremely muddy and slippery.  The two hills were about the most painful things I have ever attempted to climb.  I suppose I got up them (barely ha).  I did pretty well for myself and considering it was my first year running competitively I’m content.   Over 90% of those girls have run in high school, so being the newbie that I am I can only improve.

Some of my teammates in the red

Girl I don't play like that.

Last 100 meters. I think not.

As my coach said though, this was a learning experience and I have two more seasons ahead of me.  Watching these girls was just in phase 1 and I’m ready to move to phase 2.  The next few months, you will see running in my blogs but not as much.  During swimming season, any running I do will help and if I don’t run it won’t help but it won’t hurt either my season next year.  It isn’t like swimming puts you out of shape HA.  Needless to say-I’ll be doing between 20-35 miles weekly hopefully

I don’t regret doing cross country at all.  I think it was the greatest choice to do this season and I cannot wait for next season.  Although there were some days that stressed me out with swimming it was worth those couple of days.

Lovely ladies and sports bras

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You probably scrolled down though my cross country race to find out who is the winner of the awesome Trader Joes Cook Book.  Well using random.org (as suggested by fellow bloggers) thw winner is….

Number 7-Chuck @ Feerless Food

Chuck’s favorite TJ’s purchase is Almond flax seed butter.  Hmm I have yet to try that…or pumpkin butter!

Well we should probably get in contact so I can send you your cookbook and you can get started.  J