rodzik@www

This past Wednesday was the Intramural Cross Country meet on campus. It entailed running two and a half laps around the SRC and IM fields, or approximately 2K per lap. I've been dreading this meet for the last couple of weeks, because instead of training for it I've been sick. Not only that but right before I got sick I hadn't run for a couple weeks, so basically I went into a 5K race without having run in over a month and I'd been sick for two weeks....not exactly the best situation to be entering a race.

The race started and for the first half kilometer I was maintaining around a 3:30 min/km pace, something I felt like I should make it my goal to maintain for the race. I really started feeling like crap through the first half of the race, but right around the halfway point I tapped into the runner within and really started pushing myself through the second half of the race. I managed to pass a good number of people because of this, and pretty much had a constantly increasing pace for the entire second half of the race, allowing me to fend off people trying to gain on me.

Amazingly enough I finished with a time of 19:38, putting me in 6th place overall and 2nd place for Greeks (another Pike finished first). Pike's top 4 runners got 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th for Greeks allowing us to secure victory for 20 IM points. My pedometer said the course was 5.35 km, and Hachfeld's said it was 5.25 km. The meet officials claim it was exactly 5K but I'm not exactly sure if I believe that, although I doubt it was 5.3 km either. Either way, I ran under a 19:38 5K while sick and horribly out of shape...and some fool at the end tried yelling at one of the Greeks behind me that I was dead and had no energy left. What a horrible thing to say during my kick, that always makes me go even faster. I almost laughed though when in response to his statement someone went "Dude, he's an 800 runner," as I took off at top speed towards the finish.