The Adventures of An Unattached Athlete

As an unattached athlete, you have to find meets yourself, sign up for them yourself, fix your own transportation, etc. Oh, and you also have to pay for them yourself. Thus, I did not fly out to California like most of my teammates this week for the Mt. Sac Relays, but instead wanted to do a local meet. I don’t think it could have turned out any better:

In preparation for a sub-16.10 5000m at the Stanford Invitational in two weeks, I really wanted to do a 1500m as a tune-up for the speed. There was a small local meet not too far from school that I could go to, but when I tried to sign myself up on Tuesday morning, I found out that unattached athletes were not allowed. Well… there went my plan. I talked to Ian, and we decided to just do a normal workout on Friday instead. Bummer!

Tuesday afternoon, I went for a hard 25’ tempo followed by some speedwork, and when I came back, completely destroyed, one of my teammates mentioned that one of the guys, who is also running unattached this season, was running at the Oregon Relays. What???!! Quickly I searched on the internet for some more details, and indeed, on Friday there was a great meet at Hayward Field. But then I saw the closing date to sign up: Monday. Oops.

Luckily I am not that quickly defeated, and asked my coach to contact the organization. And the unbelievable happened: even though the heat sheets were already announced, they would place me in the A-heat if there was a scratch.

Wednesday. I walk into Ian’s office to ask my workout for Friday, and the luck is on my side once again: A scratch! At that point the A-heat still contains 26 girls, way too many. But when later on the day the final heat sheets are announced, I see that somehow, I am one of the 14 girls that will start in the A-heat. A heat consisting of Mary Cain (World Junior Champion in the 3000m), professional athletes, a legion Ducks, and... me. I looked up some of their PR’s but quickly stopped, because it was clear I was by far the slowest in the field. But hey, being the slowest in the field is actually a quite excellent position: A, because there is nothing to lose; If you finish last, well that was to be expected, and any place better than last is above expectation...! B, because I was basically guaranteed a PR if I would just follow, follow, follow.

So there I went. Skipped classes on Friday, and down to Eugene, hoping that my legs would be more or less recovered from the Tuesday workout and I would be ready to run fast. We arrived at 12 pm, which meant I had … 7,5 hours till race-time. After spending 4,5 hours in a coffeeshop (After skyping my parents, reading everything about the Boston Marathon, and following race-results from my teammates in Mt. Sac, I finally just started homework out of pure desperation to pass some time) and another 2,5 hours on the track, I could finally start my warm-up. All alone. No teammates, no coach, no people to cheer me on. Well, after all the energy I put into getting myself down here, I better would better run my heart out!

And that’s what I did. I went straight to the back after the start – partly planned, partly because there was no way I could keep up – and did not feel too good, but in the second lap I started to feel better. The field stayed close together. With 500 meters to go, I was prepared for everyone to just start kicking. But instead, I was the one that was able to kick. I had a lot left and when in the last 200 meters I had at least 3 Ducks right in front of me, I found another gear and was able to roll them up. Because I was focused on racing and not on time, I had no idea what I had just run. 4:22.47 means a 10-seconds PR, which I am very happy with! After two full years of only barely improving in the 1500m & 3000m, this season everything seems to come together. Curious how much faster I can go!