16:15.06 at Stanford Invitational

Date: Friday, April 3.
Location: Stanford
Distance: 5000m
Goal: Qualification EC<23.

On Thursday evening, I flew into San Jose and got picked up by the dad of one of my teammates, who was so welcoming and hospitable to open up his house for me. Because I am running unattached this season, I have to literally organize everything around the race myself (signing up, book a plane ticket, transportation, staying somewhere for the night etc.). NCAA-regulations are very strict, which means I could not even jump into the team-van to drive from UP to the airport or back, for instance. Luckily I could stay at my teammate's house.

Friday was spent doing… nothing. By now, I have raced so many evening races that I have been getting very good in doing nothing. Basically, I slept over 10 hours on Friday night and did not wake up until 9, had breakfast, wasted time on my computer, went for a 20min shake-out around 11am, had second breakfast, took a 1,5 hour ‘nap’ (laying on bed with closed eyes), had a late lunch at like 3pm, and got my stuff ready for the race. At 430pm we left to the race, where I saw my teammates and coach and watched some races, soaking up the incredible energy of this amazing track race. At 6pm, an hour before my race, I started my warm-up, and then it was finally race-time.

Over the last weeks, I have been feeling very good. After the 3000m in Seattle I had a few days off and didn’t do workouts for a week, followed by a week with only workouts off the track (Not my idea, but Ian wanted to make sure I was really rested and ready to go). By then, I was anxious to get back on the track, a little scared about where my shape would be. But in the two weeks before Stanford I had excellent workouts, which gave me the confidence that I was in much, much better shape than when I ran my PR of 16:32 in Mt. Sac last year.

And I was much better. Before the race, I heard there was a girl pacing at 78’’ a lap (3.15/km). Well I don’t know what this girl was doing, but she was certainly not running 78’’ a lap. The first lap was too fast (Fine with me!) and then she ran something like an 81’’ so that we had to play catch-up from there. I felt really good for the first 3k, although we came through a little slow (9:45). When at 4km I saw that we had gone even slower (I came through above 13 flat), I knew it was going to be difficult to get under the standard of 16:10. I kept trying to be aggressive and not let girls pass me, but I did not have the wheels to shift to the next gear. In the last lap, I think I was thinking a little too much about (not getting) the standard, instead of focusing on getting everything out of me to win the race (I ended up 6th). Except for that, I am happy with the way I raced. Even though I did not get the standard, I find it hard to be too disappointed with 16:15, a 17 sec-pr. I do make it pretty difficult for myself this way though, because now I have to do another one. After talking to some different people, I am thinking about flying myself out to the Payton Jordan Invitational next month.

Bill Hastings filmed the entire race: https://vimeo.com/124271876