Cross country RACE. Richland Center Invitational. 2 mile warmup, 3 mile race, 0.3 mile cooldown. Drizzling, foggy, cool, 70F. I finished 10th out of I-don't-know-how-many ... running 17:47 on a hilly course. Team got 3rd place out of six teams. I am very disappointed in my race. I ran extremely poorly, probably my worst race this season. I totally sucked today. My lungs felt really tight, and I was wheezing more than breathing out there. My legs felt really tired. I have no excuse for running so poorly, no excuse at all. I gotta get my sh*t together and get going if I'm going to win conference. On the team, Chris Kelly ran well today, and did Ken Nikl. Todd Crary and Ben did not run as well as I thought they would. Nellie is slightly injured so didn't run all that fantastic either, but still finished as our 5th man. I've now had me a$$ kicked, I should start all over and work for that conference victory over Boehm and Klecker.
30 years later:
This race did not go as planned. I really went into it brimming with confidence and mentally prepared to attack the hills. Instead, I felt weak and sloppy on the course, and my legs were just numb and useless. Hindsight is unfair, but look back at the previous three days: a hard intrasquad race on hills, a hilly fartlek run (after which I wrote that I felt tired), then an almost six mile run on a humid day. Clearly, I had worn myself out prior to this race. Not very smart.
I actually left out most of the curse words from my running log entry. I was pretty frustrated and angry at myself after this race. I had expected much more. Bummer.
On the other hand, the guys a bit lower on our varsity were running stronger and stronger, that was a good sign for the strength of our team. Training on the Baraboo hills was shaping us into tougher runners. Okay, we came into this race without adquate rest, and that cost us a higher placing. But we were coming along as team, and if our sixth and seventh guys were now making an impression, we were going to be harder to beat at the conference championship meet.
In the last line of my entry you see the shift in focus as far as my main competition in the conference. Terry Connors had dropped back just a bit, but Jim Boehm from Mauston had moved up based on his recent times. Jim was another prototypical Wisconsin runner: big, strong, quiet type who ran hard and wouldn't be intimidated by anyone. Matt Klecker we've talked about before, his savvy and mentoring worried me, and the previos meet he'd almost beaten me. While not ignoring any other possible rivals, I had moved my primary sights onto these two. Time would tell if that was a prudent move.
Article from the Baraboo News Republic (this one was so faded that it was illegible, I bleached it out using photo-fixing software, and upped the contrast, hope you can read it):
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