Big Fish, Small Pond

So, I'll start out by saying that my race this weekend was shit, but we had 3 workout days (mon-wed-thurs), a long base run (tues), and a 20min base run + core-weights (friday), and my legs were just donezo. I realized I have to be pretty fresh to run a good solid 800, and that I can crash and burn EASILY if I'm not hot. We'll see how my next (and likely last) 800 goes. Oh well.

Anyway, other guys ran exceptionally well at the meet against Redlands (side note - we won by one point. ONE. We haven't lost a dual meet in ~18 years, and we won by 1. Jesus.), and C-M-S now has the:

Fastest Frosh over 1500m (3:57) in the country, the 2nd fastest Frosh in the 3k Steeple (9:42?)in the country, and the 3rd fastest Frosh in the 5k in the country (15:05).

What's cool about this to me, is that none of these guys are the best at their respective events on the team. While all are very good marks, they aren't the best, or even close to it.

Personally, I have the 4th fastest 1500m time on the team in 4:05 which I ran about 8 weeks ago.

Everyone on my team was the best at their High School in their respective event. Not "almost the best" or "mostly the best"....THE best. The 3:57 frosh was actually a State Champion in New Mexico.

Because of this, there was a lot of racing and overtraining in workouts early on in the season. No one likes to get rolled, especially when you've been accustomed to being the one "doing to rolling" so to speak. I call this the "Top Dog" syndrome. Too much time at the top only makes the fall harder. And boy, a number of us fall HARD when we overtrain. Myself included.

It took some time to get used to, but we all realized that it's actually okay to run a 61 second quarter mile repeat.....and come in 8th on the team.

We've learned our strengths, and different people lead different workouts. We're coming together as runners, and one by one we're dropping great times.

Being a Big Fish in a Small Pond in HS is all well and good, but at some point outkicking guys who are 10seconds slower than you loses its pazzaz, and you need to Billy-Mills it over some other Fish.

Eating bigger Fish will make YOU bigger.

I'm racing the 1500m this weekend at Pomona's relatively large invite.

And lord knows I can't let those other Fish win, even if their on my own team. I'm looking for sub4:02, which would put me easily on the top10 Frosh in the country over 1500m, and also give me a converted sub420 1600.

Time to eat some bigger Fish.