RACE REPORT: DISTRICTS (I)

Our district (state qualifying) track meet was held on Friday. Last year, I ran the 4x800 at districts and our team qualified with a time of 10:18, a second before the cutoff time. I was the slowest on the team, at 2:37 or 2:38 and I was extremely nervous, even throughout the race, because I didn't want it to be my fault that we didn't make it to state. We did make it though, and it was lots of fun. This year, I knew what I had to do and what I would miss out on if we didn't make it to state.

The day started off okay until our teacher brought doughnuts in my second hour class. Of course I refrained from eating one, I did have a track meet afterall, probably the most important of the year. It was hard watching everyone stuff their faces with delicious doughnuts but all I could think was "what would AK do?" because she's always getting mad at us for eating junk food or having an extra cookie during the season.

We left class two hours early and rode a school bus for about an hour until we reached the meet site. It was at a middle school, but shared by both high schools in the city. There was lots of bleachers to sit at and enough room on the opposite stands for my coach to sit by himself (he usually does this, it's kind of weird but we're used to it). The track was a wonderful blue. It reminded me of Drake, where the Drake Relays and the state meet are held, which has the most beautiful track. This track was wonderful but not nice as Drake's, but then, it is hard to top that.

The bathrooms were awesome. And as a cross country and track runner, I've seen a lot of bathrooms. One side of the bathrooms had more stalls than any other outdoor track we've been to. And there were two sides. The doors were long enough, there was soap, and there were enough paper towels. This place was very nice, except the barbed wire on the top of the fence surrounding the track made it feel a little like a prison.

The meet was to begin at four, with the 4x800 at 4:25, after the boy's 4x800. I ate half of my butterfinger granola bar for good luck and sat with my teammates while watching AK warmup for the 3000m. Our relay team consisted of me, JS, RB, and another girl who doesn't usually run varsity, AL. JS and I have ran 2:34 and under which is where we needed to be. RB hasn't been doing as well this year with a 2:36, but I knew she would give everything because she was a senior and this was her last chance. AL was our weakest link, as I was last year, because she's not consistant and she runs a lot slower than us. We were ranked 5th in our district with a time of 10:26. We needed to be in at least the top 6 but we didn't know how fast we could go because we hadn't run together yet. This was districts though, so it didn't matter what we did before, it mattered what we could do at that meet.

We ran two warmup laps with the team and did some stretching before doing two more laps. It was cloudy out so the stadium lights were on. Rain was expected but only on and off showers. Two other district meets were postponed until Saturday which meant that we wouldn't find out whether we qualified for state on Saturday morning. This was my kind of weather though, in the low 60's with rain. Bad weather to watch a track meet in, great weather to race in.

Our district was much easier than last year's and the 3000m was really slow. AK came in third though, with 11:34, about 20 seconds faster than her fastest this season. She always manages to pull out a great performance at districts. I didn't realize how long the race actually was though, until I watched the beginning, went to the bathroom, and watched her finish. It doesn't seem that long when you're running.

JS was starting our relay off, because I refused to and my coach wanted me to anchor it. She was racing against seven other girls, and we had to get in the top six to have a chance to qualify. The top two in each district automatically made it, and then the next fastest twelve teams qualified. We knew we wouldn't get first or second so not only were we racing against the other people in the race, we were racing against others in the state.

The race did not start out well. A few seconds after they began, the gun was shot off again and everyone had to start over. We couldn't figure out what was going on, you wouldn't think anyone would false start a distance race but we didn't see anyone fall either. Somebody nearby thought one of the girls had cut over too soon, but we were worried that it would throw JS off because it appeared to have happened around or to her. According to my parents, a girl had cut too soon which made another girl fall right in front of JS. She managed to dodge the fallen girl, probably due to her experience dodging people at the last track meet.

After the race began again, JS was in the back and a little boxed in, one of the reasons I don't like starting a relay. She managed to get around some girls though and handed off the baton to RB in 4th place. She had ran a 2:33, right what she needed to do. RB ran a 2:33 also, and kept us in 4th place, when the baton was handed off to AL. We knew that AL was our slowest girl but she is extremely hard working. She let a girl slip past her though and started falling back. Both RB and JS were on the track screaming at her to speed it up, districts is probably the only place where you can do this and get away with not saying anything nice. Her PR for an 800 was 2:37, but she ran a 2:41.

The baton was given to me in 5th place. It was up to me, everyone had already done what they could. My coach was yelling at me to get the 4th place girl, as were my teammates. RB and JS were actually screaming at me more than my coach was. We had agreed before the race to remember what state was like when we began slowing down, because except for AL, we were all on last years 4x800 team. I did this throughout the race, whenever my legs felt tired, I would think about how much I wanted to go to state. Districts are a different meet because of this, you run as much on emotions as anything else.

On my second lap, the girl was only a few seconds closer, but at districts, everything counts. With 200m left to go, I sprinted with everything I had left. I realized that I was the one finishing this, my time would depend on our team time. I was not going to let them down. So when I had 100m left, where I usually become tired without enough energy to sprint, I pushed it harder. I told myself that I had to run at state, I wanted to race at Drake so badly. And I crossed the line using energy I didn't know I had.

My PR for an 800 is 2:34, which I have run three times. Once last year, at divisionals, when my coach told me that if I ran fast than I could run at districts. That performance really surprised him and it's one of my favorite 800's. I ran the same time twice this year and I was ready to beat it. So, following the pattern of our first two runners, I ran a 2:33. Our relay time was 10:23, four seconds slower than last year's cutoff time. This was obviously not good, not only because we were ranked 25th in our class with a time of 10:26 and only 24 teams ran at state, but also because we were on the edge. AL looked like she was ready to cry and didn't cooldown with us, although we kept reassuring her that it wasn't her fault. We weren't mad at her, we were just really worried that we would make it. The three of us knew we had done our best out there and we had done what we needed to do. AL was trying to make excuses, which kind of bothered me because excuses aren't a real reason. We were not in a good mood but we were coming together against one of the real causes that we might not make it.