Framing your race performances

Framing your race performances

For the large majority of the team, measuring success comes from running faster. In and of itself not bad, however this sport (cross country) is never run in a lab. Never. Every week, every day, every race is different. Multiple factors affect races. Arguably, none more so then weather and surface.

After this week, where we had two races that we had some expectation of being fast, only to see that expectation fade away I feel compelled to explain how it's important to frame your race based on the factors and context of each race.

So far this season we have had far more "slow" weather conditions then we have had "fast" weather conditions. Alamosa, albeit at 7000 ft was arguably our best weather day thus far. The real unfortunate evening thus far has been Dave Sanders where the course is in general fast enough to produce fast times, just not in a 20 mph windy 83 degree afternoon. You could almost say the same for Broomfield to some degree.

In this sport it is important to understand that we may have a great race, and not run fast and set a Personal Best. Lets look and frame a few races from this past week that stand out as great to me, but maybe not to the untrained eye.

Performance 1: Leif Rowland

• Alamosa race in ideal conditions: 25:15
• Dave Sanders Race in okay but not ideal: 25:34

For Leif to be within 19 seconds of his personal best on a less then ideal evening when most runners were more then 19 seconds off their personal best says a lot about his effort that night. 

Performance 2 and 3: Samantha Schmidt and Sydny Oryshchyn

In framing the performances from these two ladies we must compare with what the best have experienced thus far this season. I don't like comparing with other athletes in most situations, but for this one it just highlights the difference in courses and performances. 

Madison Mooney has been stellar thus far this season. At Liberty Bell on Sept. 9 on a ridiculously fast course made of hard surface and with a fabulous evening of weather that night she ran a 17:49 for her Personal Best 5k cross country time and won the race. Two weeks later, on Saturday with great weather again, but on a soft surface, all grass course, she ran 19:06 and won again. Over a minute difference. 

Sydny and Sammy now....

Sammy's ran 22:30 in Alamosa, then 22:23 in Broomfield. Sammy managed to set a Personal Best 22:15 on Saturday in a fantastic effort. Many of the girls just in front of Sammy in the results and just behind her have personal bests ranging from 20:59-21:30 on faster courses in Colorado. 

Sydny ran 22:13 in Alamosa, set a PR at Broomfield in 21:56 and now ran 22:15 at Washington Park on Saturday. Sydny finished right behind Sammy. 

Its safe in my mind to say that taking a conservative 45 seconds off the times from Saturday at Washington Park is a very fair concept of what we might have run had we say gone to Thornton and ran at that meets fast track.  And I stress conservative estimate. Its fully conceivable that a minute is fair. After all look at Maddy Mooney.

For Dave Sanders, I would not hesitate to take 30 seconds off conservatively for weather conditions. 

All this explanation should do is help you reframe your race a bit should you be feeling like you did not do well because of the time on the clock. Some other things to consider when framing your race performance...

• How healthy are you?
• Have you been sick or coming off of injury or currently injured?
• The amount of stress you are experiencing in life at the moment
• Your own personal race prep...both mentally and physically.
• Your own personal context or story

 Certainly, you might go through some of these and realize you did not have a good race. The next step then is considering how you will improve for the next time and accepting that bad races happen and that there will be another chance to race and succeed. Remember that failure is not often what we think it is. It is often a way for us to correct, adjust, improve so that we can experience a huge success in the future. 

Overall, we are very happy with were we are at with our team as we go into the final weeks/month of the season. We have a great finish to our season ahead...

Coming up: 

October 13th League Championship

We will have another chance on the fast track of Clement Park. If you get into a great rhythm around that lake, its fast...assuming the weather is good of course :) 

We have Freshman/ Sophomore championships on Monday October 17th. 

Regional Championship is October 21st

State Championship is October 29th