Post Drake

In my other post about the Drake Relays I mentioned how we had a very good chance of winning the 4 by 800 meter relay. With the members of our team we all expected to be first. Now after it is over I am going to talk about how we, or should I say I, screwed up.

My team and my coach told me to get ahead early as the first runner of the relay. I was planning on it, but when the gun went off and I started to sprint so were the other runners and faster than I was. I tried to go faster and not get trapped on the inside. They were going too fast and I thought to myself that if I wanted to run a decent race than I would need to conserve more energy than I was. All other teams had either their fastest or second fastest runners running the first leg. They did that so their team wouldn’t be going into the second leg second to last like ours. We would have done a lot better if Anthony a faster runner than I had gone first and also if he hadn’t tripped when I tried to give him the baton.

I came down the last 100 meters using energy coming from somewhere not known to me. I was within ten meters of Anthony and I saw that directly behind him was a first leg runner laying down on the blue track. The warning wouldn’t and couldn’t come out of my mouth, I was just too exhausted. He tripped and got back up adrenaline filled. After I handed him the baton, I stood there and realized because that guy was laying there we would probably not win this race. In disbelief I stood where I had handed Anthony the baton until one of the track managers came over to tell me to come to the field. Filled with adrenaline, Anthony ran the first part of his race way too fast and ran a bad time for his ability.

Overall we ran four seconds slower than our qualifying time, which was very depressing. Thinking about how if I had just run faster than that guy that Anthony had tripped over we would have done much better. Even though I am pretty upset about it, I am using it as motivation to work harder and when state comes around I am planning to place first for the 4 by 800 meter relay.