Cedar Falls Meet

Last Thursday, my cross country team won our third consecutive meet! The course was in Cedar Falls and is one of my favorite courses. You start out running around baseball diamonds, then around a pond and all the sudden you are in a cornfield and you run past a drum line. The course then finishes downhill. It’s a really fun course!

Last year, we had districts in Cedar Falls. I ended up getting third in that race, which was my highest place finish of my sophomore year! We ended up getting second in districts and I got interviewed in the newspaper.

http://thegazette.com/2011/10/20/district-xc-at-cedar-falls/

I have so many good memories at the Cedar Falls meet. I remember freshman year, when I wasn’t so focused on running, my friends and me got in trouble by our coach for talking to the boys from Washington, which was actually quite funny… Last year we got really cool tee-shirts and our team ran really good. This year, though, the meet was slightly awkward as my friends were mostly just setting me up with a homecoming date, which I am not really sure I want to go with. 

Our team did run very well on Thursday. We did a good job of staying together and we ended up finishing in 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th place and our fifth runner finished in 18^th place. I ended up finishing 6^th at a time of 15:11. I keep running close to the same time, which is really worrying me. Last year I got a PR (personal record) at almost every meet and dropped a total of 2 minutes throughout the year. Although I am a lot better right now then I was at this meet last year, I am still wondering why I am not improving very much. I think I didn’t run as well this meet, because I am starting to get shin splints, which is also scaring me a lot. I am still proud of how I ran on Thursday, and I am especially proud of how our team did Thursday, but part of me wishes I would have just run a little faster.

Also at the meet there was this insanely fast girl from Waverly Shellrock. She ended up running 14:26, which is slow for her, considering she has already ran under 14 minutes this year. Girls cross country runners have gotten soooooo much faster and sooooo much more competitive this year.

Kennedy is now ranked 3^rd in the state, behind #1 Dowling and #2 Pleasant Valley. Linn-mar is ranked 4^th and we have beat them twice, so I am really looking forward to state, I think we have a good chance of doing better than any other Kennedy cross country team has done.