Nov. 15
Today is the state meet in Spartanburg. We are ready. We've been training for 10 weeks. We've been doing three-mile workouts, a couple of four-mile workouts, 400s, 600s, fartlecks (which aren't what they sound like!) 200s and THE HILL! During the race, Mount Pleasant was in front, or near the front every time. We met our goals. Everyone is going to the regional meet, every age group won, also the team won. I also met my goals to win State Champion. Competition was tough, especially within my own team. That was probably the best race of my life! We had four individual state champions-Carly Hall from sub-bantam girls, Noah Spencer from sub-bantam boys, Jacob Spencer (me!) from midget boys and Megan Lowry from youth girls. Noah Spencer got a course record by 10 seconds. Several of our teammates got 2nd place!
Nov. 16
Today is Sunday, the day after the state meet. Coach Tami (Dennis) got us back running quick. We did our warm up of about 500 meters. Then we stretched and ran. Sundays are easy practices, just to get some miles in our legs. Sunday practice is good because the trails get us used to mud and roots and stuff. Today we are just running two miles because after practice we are doing an award ceremony from the state meet yesterday.
Nov. 17
Today is Monday. We did a two-lap warm up around the track. Then we circled up and did all of our stretches. Coach Tami said to jog over to the baseball fields. So then we knew that we were doing 600s because whenever we go over there we do 600s. We jogged a few laps around the baseball fields to warm up some more, and then we lined up on the starting line. Everyone stepped ahead of the line as usual! Coach Tami said we would be doing four 600s. There are probably the hardest workout of all workouts. Everybody did really well today. I even broke my own record. After the run we jogged back to the track and went home to get a good meal and rest.
Nov. 18
Rest day
Nov. 19
Toady is Wednesday. When we got to practice we did a two lap around the track warm up. Then we circled up to stretch. Then I noticed that Neil McDonough was there. He is the fastest runner in the state. He wins almost every road race! He talked to us about his recent trip to Kenya. He trained with the Kenyans. He said that if they run they try to make the Olympics. He came in almost last in all of the races there, but here he can run under a 15 minute 5K! After he spoke to us Coach Tami dragged us over to the football field for another grueling workout. She put us into our age groups and started us off on six sets of fartlecks. We ran two minutes easy, then one minute hard. Then we ran two minutes easy again and got back into our age groups. Then we ran one minute hard again, etc.. Then we jogged back to the track and went home.
Nov. 20
Today is Thursday. Thursday is the optional practice. I didn't go today because we wanted to go to bed early to get a good rest for regionals. But usually we run a two lap warm up and then stretch. After we stretch, the coach tells us which way we are running and we run that for about 30 minutes. When we come back and jog around the track until everyone gets back (if they can make it back!) Then everyone goes home.
Nov. 21
Today we are driving to Mechanicsville, Va. for the regional meet. It took five hours, 49 minutes to get there. It was 427 miles. Our team walked the course at 5 p.m. Then we went to go get some pasta and a good rest.
Nov. 22
Today is regionals. We expect some region champs and the midget group to win as a team. We got to the Mt. Pleasant tent to get our numbers and then the people who weren't here yesterday went to the walk-through at 8:30 a.m. Each age group went to warm-up before each race. We won one age group, four age groups won second place and 27 total qualified for Nationals. Carly Hall in sub-bantam girls won first place as well as Noah Spencer in sub-bantam boys! My time was good-it was 11:31. My coach said we might have won midget boys-but later we found out we came in second! I still think our team DOMINATED!