Bill Dellinger Invitational

I have been back in the States for almost a month now, and I am completely back into the rhythm of school, homework, running, eating, sleeping, and -when I am lucky- some social stuff in between. Training did not go completely as planned: I was excited to get back early, so I would have one last week of just focusing on running, spending time with the team, and enjoying the Oregonian sun. Unfortunately, I got sick on teamcamp and stayed sick for almost a week, caused by a stomach virus. I had a fever the first day, and after that I felt ok, but whenever I tried to run my stomach blew up like a balloon, and I would have cramps for hours afterwards. Not being able to run was a frustrating experience, but I could also put it into perspective: I knew I was in very good shape after all the good summer training, and I also knew that some extra rest was probably even good for me. And indeed, I came back with a 4 mile tempo that went faster than ever, which showed me what I already thought: I am in pretty good shape already and way ahead of where I was last year.

Last Friday, we had our first race, in Eugene. It was bloody hot, and I decided to only do a short warm-up (there wasnt much to WARM-UP because only walking in the sun for a few minutes made you sweat) and throw a lot of cold water over me to make my body temperature lower. It worked, and the race went well. I started a little slower than I normally do, which was nice because in the second mile I could run from one group to another, passing a lot of girls, and I ended up 4th (I had no idea that I had caught that much runners and thought I was 10th or so, until Ian told me 15 minutes after the finish...). As a team, we did great too. We beat Oregon, one of the top teams in the nation, who did not run their top runners, but probably hadnt expected to be beaten by us.

I have a month of training left before my next race, which will be a 6k up in Seattle. That' gonna be an important one, because we have to beat as many teams as possible to have a shot at Nationals later in the season.