Next up, State

Jensen (my coach) told us that there are 4 factors that we can control, so that we run well at state. In general these factors apply to all races, but they are quite hard to follow. I have been trying my best to do what he told us to do, but it has been a little hard. These are the factors and how they apply to me.

Nutrition: This one is a little obvious, but extremely important and really hard to follow. You have to eat healthy, a lot of carbohydrates, but not from junk food and candy. Being that this is football season and Halloween is approaching this is really hard to do. I have been trying my best to eat healthy, but it hasn’t been going as well as planned. I ate breakfast at home instead of getting McDonalds with my family last Saturday, but then I went to a football game and ate a bag of chips. I only ate half of a cupcake today, but I ate a milky way too. So my diet is slightly better, but nowhere close to where it should be right now.

Sleep:  Jensen wants us to get a good amount of sleep and regular hours of sleep. That means getting home early this weekend. Friday night I did good and I was home before 10, but last night I was planning on getting home at 10:30, but ended up not getting home until 11:20ish. I have been getting 7 ½ - 8 hours of sleep every night so that’s good!

Training: Jensen tells us what to run, but you actually have to run what he says to run and at the pace he says to run it at. Last weekend I forgot to run three miles and Jensen says that’s the reason I didn’t run as well on Thursday, so since then I have been running exactly what he has been telling me to run.

Stress: Family stress and school stress plays into how good you run. I am not sure why, but even though my grades are on the borderline of good and bad, I haven’t been getting that stressed out. It helps to just have times where you do nothing and forget about everything. Sometimes you just have to calm down and just relax.