Last Week

Well, not a whole lot of exciting things happened last week.  I guess one thing that happened was that my roomate finally moved in.  He is an odd fellow, no doubt of that, but that's okay.  I don't really see him that often.  The only time I've seen him much was the last weekend.  He needed some help with his math, so I tried to help him the best I could.  It wasn't easy though.  His understanding of math is, well, lacking.  I don't mean to slam him by saying that, but his math skills are not even at a proficient middle school level, unfortunately.  But I'll try to help him the most I can, I just don't want to do it for him.  He wants me to make sure he does them all correctly, but I don't have time to make sure he does them all right.  So, the other night he was trying to have me do it for him pretty much.  But I told him that he needed to do it himself and when he had questions, to ask me.  Well, he has a lot of questions.  

ok, ok, /rant

I'm trying to think if anything else happened.  There were no races last week.  Just training.  On tuesday we did a 4 mile tempo followed by a 400, 600, 800, 400 at a little faster than race pace.  On thursday we did 12x400 with about 80 second rest.  It was the fastest 400 workout I've done all season.  I didn't really feel good, but I managed to pull through ok. It was also the first such workout in which I ran all the 400's under 70 seconds, something I couldn't have come close to doing last year, or even last track season.

This is likely the last week of cross country for us, but there is still a chance that, if we run our best, the team could make it to nationals.  It is a long shot, but the teams ranked ahead of us are beatable.  I just hope the guys running really believe that.  

I did get a new video camera this week.  It seems to work well.  It has good quality, but I do need to get some rechargeable batteries for it and a 516mb SD card.  But that won't be a problem for awhile.  I may not need them for some time.  I plan on using the camera mostly to record races this track season.  It should do the job quite nicely.  It is small and very compact (mom, dad, it's probably about 1/3 the size of yours) so it will be easy to travel with.

Well, that is about all I have to say about my last week or so.  I guess for future reference, I may come up the saturday before thanksgiving to run that race in smithfield.  And then I will definitely be up for Thanksgiving.  I am excited to visit again.

Something Talk About..

Well, I have been wondering what I was going to talk about on this entry, as not a whole lot has happened, and yet so much has happened.  On saturday the team ran at the Big Sky Conference Championships in Portland and took second place behind NAU, who is considered one of the top 10 teams in the nations.  From what I heard, most of our guys ran well and I think that Coach was probably happy with how they ran.

Regionals is up next, and is the last chance to qualify for nationals.  It would probably take a miracle for the team to get in, but we do have a small chance I think.  It will be very, very tough though.  Our top guy, Bryant Jensen has a shot at qualifying individually too, so hopefully he will get after it and do it.  I really hope he does, he has worked very hard and deserves it.

School has been going fine lately too.  Nothing terribly difficult has come my way and I hope it more or less stays that way, although a challenge wouldn't be unwelcome occaisonally.  My job finding hasn't gone well so far.  I've applied to a couple places, but I don't know if I'll hear from them again.  I really just don't have the experience they want, but I hope they will give me a chance.

The one other thing that is happening, is that my new roommate is moving in today.  His name is Charles.  I think that he will help us be able to keep the place  a little cleaner.  He has a lot that he wants to have done, and I don't know if we are going to do all that he wants, mostly because a lot of it is unneccesary or we've done fine without.  It will be a new experience with him here, that's for sure.  Hopefully all will go well the move and hopefully he will turn out to be a good guy.

My running has gone well lately too.  I had a good week, as I ran about 65 miles.  On saturday I ran up a canyon with my roommate and it was well worth it, despite the slow pace we had to go.  The canyons are beautiful right now.  The leaves have fallen and it leaves the ground covered in all these yellow leaves.  It is amazing.  Hopefully, when I get my camera, I will be able to take some pictures and show you what I am talking about.

A Core Workout for Emily...

A little odd, but hey, it works.  It's a good workout that will strengthen your core in no time.  I hope you appreciate this Emily.

Whoa there...

Well, so far the last week and a half have been semi-interesting, with pre-nationals last saturday in Indiana and the Utah High School XC Championships yesterday.  Along with the paper Iwrote and the presentation I had last week, it's been fun.

Pre-Nationals, Terre Haute, Indiana.  A site that was created to be a cross country course.  And that is what it is used for.  Our team attended, just like we do each year.  Except this year, the team did not return very happy.  Indeed, they took 24th out 41 in the first of the two races.  The team was hoping to earn some at-large points that could bump them into nationals, but alas, it doesn't look like they got any.  Unfortunately a couple guys didn't have good races; they went out too fast and burned out on the last 1000 meters or so.  This sort of thing happens, of course, but it usually happens earlier in the year.  But now, at least, it has happened, and hopefully everybody learned from the experience.  I think they did.  Conference is coming up next week.  It will be held in Portland, so it will probably be wet and somewhat cool there.  I would expect the course to be fairly muddy and tough overall.  Our coach has high expectations for the team.  They should finish at least second place at Conference, which will get them into regionals two weeks later.  Regionals is especially important because that is the race which can auto-qualify a team for nationals.  The top two teams at Regionals automatically go to nationals.  I don't think the team can go top two at regionals though.  That was why getting points at pre-national was so important.  I guess we will see what happens.

Yesterday I went to the Utah State XC Meet.  It was quite an incredible thing to watch.  The times were especially amazing.  But there is controversy surrounding that.  There is speculation that the course took a short cut this year at one point, cutting off 75 meters from the normal course.  This would, naturally, explain all of the extremely fast times.  This year, compared to last year, was incredibly fast and when I saw all the times, I just couldn't believe them.  I know how tough that course is, and kids ran times I knew they probably weren't capable of running.  But that said, cross country isn't all about time.  It is all about place, and that is what won the races.  My former high school, Mountain Crest, did fairly well.  Macinze O'very won the 4A division race for her 2nd state title (she won her first one as a freshman).  She led the Mountain Crest girls to their 3rd state title in the last four years.  The guys also did okay, but I don't know if they all raced their best.  I thought that they didn't place as well as they could have, but you can't fix that now.  Skylar Riggs was their top guy, coming in 4th place.  Brayden Mickleson was the number 2 man, coming in 10th in the division.  They led the boys team to a 5th place finish in Division 4A, the teams 4th year in a row placing 5th or better (5th in 2005, 2nd in 2006, 3rd in 2007).  Timpview won the guys Division 4A race, scoring only 58 points en route to their 3rd straight title.  Alta won the Division 5A race and won the combined scoring over Timpview.

Well, I guess I'll comment on my training a little bit now.  It has been going very well.  Today Coach Pilkington had us do mile repeats.  My times were 5:02, 4:58, 4:58 and 5:00.  After those we did an 800, with the first 400 at mile pace, and the last 400 faster.  I think overall it was one of my best workouts this season.  If someone had told me last year that I would be doing mile repeats this fast, I would have laughed at them.  I find it incredible that I can run like this.  I can hardly wait for the future.  

Life is truly great here at Weber.  There is somthing about this place that just makes it seem like it is the right place for me.  But some people don't even think our apartment is the right place.  Two of my roomates moved out this week to another apartment down the hallway because they dislike one of my other roomates.  The guy they don't like isn't that deserving.  They say he is really disrespectful and for some reason they just hate him.  They treat him like dirt, so he doesn't respect them (and believe me, they don't deserve any).  I have found that when I treat him respectfully, he treats me the same way.  He really isn't that bad of a dude.  He does do somethings that are annoying, but everybody does annoying things.  We just have to learn to live with it.

Well, that'll be enough for now.  I think next time I will record my core workout and post that on here.  So Emily, if you've read my blog this far, look for the video.  Then you can't say you don't know a good core workout.

Just Shoot Me...

Yet another week has gone by and this time, I have have something that is at least semi-interesting to say.  It all started on Monday when coach told us that we had to go get our blood drawn.  Unfortunately, I don't like needles so I was a little worried about it.  But, it wasn't bad at all.  I hardly felt the prick, which was no worse than somebody pinching me.  I actually thought it was kind of cool how the blood filled the vials.  It was like a little jet of red water shooting into it.

I also had to get a flu shot at the weber clinic.  Luckily it was free because I didn't want to have to pay for it.  But that was even easier than the blood getting drawn.  I could hardly feel the needle prick me and the only weird part was when the liquid went in.  That felt weird.  Another downside to the flu shot though, is that my arm still hurts where they poked the needle three days after I got the shot!  

And then yesterday my english teacher decided that she wanted to celebrate (she made some money somehow, somewhere.  I don't know or care).  So she bought us all breakfast.  We went to the cafeteria here at Weber and ordered our food and she payed for it all.  I just got a breakfast burrito and most people tried not to get something too expensive, since there was about 20 of us.  Still, that was pretty fun.

And yet another thing.  I went to the Weber State volleyball game yesterday.  That was pretty fun, especially since our team won.  They played very well, winning the series 3-1.  Everytime it was game point, the entire crowd would stand up and stomp their feet.  It was awesome.  I think they have another game tonight, so I will probably end up going to that too.

Running has also been going well lately.  This week I felt a lot better than I have been in the last few weeks, even though my mileage was higher than it's been for quite awhile.  The last time I ran over 67 miles in a week was probably in february (although I've run 66 mile weeks a few times since I came here).  I imagine I will keep my mileage up since I won't be racing again, until maybe January during Indoor Track.  I look forward to that time, because I am going to be in really good shape at that point and I should be able to post some good times.  I have also tried to step up my weight-lifting.  Before I didn't want to get too sore for workouts or for racing, but now that I don't have to race for a long time, I figure I might as well start upping the difficulty of those workouts.  It might make me a little sore at first, but it will pay off big in the long run.

Another Week

Well, yet another week has gone by and I guess a little more has happened this time around.  Last friday I raced at the Utah Valley University XC Invitational.  It was only a 5k, which is really unheard of in college.  Not many 5ks are ever run.  I ran the course in 16:55, for a 24th place finish.  The course was wet because of a microburst earlier in the day, so that slowed most people down quite a bit.  I also think that the course was a little long.  I think that it was probably 3.2 miles instead of 3.1, but that isn't really something I'm sure of.  Either way, I didn't feel very good during the race.  My hamstrings were tight most of the way and I didn't seem to have the energy I needed to race well.  This is also probably my last race in a long time.  I doubt that I will race again this cross country season, especially since the next races are pre-nationals, conference and regionals.  I highly doubt I'll make top 8 by that point.  There really isn't much else to talk about.  Nothing else has happened that's significant around here, at least that I know of.  I guess general conference was pretty good.  I enjoyed listening to it.

Well, I have some good news to post today!  The first thing I want to say is that I got an A on my first Essay for English 2010.  I'm not gonna lie, I really thought that I wouldn't get a good grade.  I thought I would get a B+ at best, but it looks like I wrote the paper a little better than I anticipated.  I almost feel bad because it only took me about 2 hours to research and write.  Maybe a little more.  But some of my classmates and one of my friends spent a lot of time on their essay's and didn't get as good of a grade.  They make me want to work harder, but I don't feel like I need to at the same time.

Next piece of good news is that I will be running at the UVU XC Invitational on October 4th!  I'm so excited to get to race again.  I still feel like I'm in really good shape, although my workouts this week haven't gone very well.  I've been pretty tired, but I think that I will be ready to go next Saturday.  It will be a four mile race, held at the UVU Campus Cross Country Course (according to the website), so where ever that is.  I will find out eventually.  I guess that's not my main concern yet.  

The varsity squad won't be running at UVU, however.  They will racing in Oregon against some really tough teams.  I wish them luck for next week and I hope they run their best.  They will need to run their best if they want to get points that will help them get to nationals.

Other than that, my life has been pretty normal the last week or so.  Nothing huge has happened here.  At least, not that I know of.