BAD sectional race: how to mentally recover and training for track

[daniel_6_mile_man]

At sectionals it was a flat course with one hill. My PR was 18:16 and I believed I could beat that. A teammate I beat by 5 seconds at conference ended up beating me by 40 + seconds!! I did an 18:55!! Very bad performance. I started otu too fast and it was cold, but other than that evertything was good. I was passed a lto on oen big hill, btu other than that it was all flat. Had I run an 18:20 I would have been top 25, but instead I got 32. My teammate did an 18:08 and made it to state. So of course I feel bad, and sad. But what can I do to mentally get over this???? its not that he beat me that im pset, its the fact that my time was so bad compared to my PR
I plan to take a week or 10 days off (doign cross trainign liek volleyball, basketball, biking, etc.) and then run again. Woudl this be good to do or what else would be best???

In preparation for the 1 and 2 mile races, would high mileage be best or should i do lower quicker miles????

Thanks!!!

[owen13000]

I know the boat your in. Our coach warned us all year about loosing the race in the first mile. We never even had to think about it untill sectionals. I came through the first half-mile at 2:30. "Woah, this is a bit fast," was all I could think. So I slowed down a bit. I felt like a bit, but it was really alot. My fist mile was 5:25! I couldn't recover from that bad of a mile. The couse was 2.98mi and I got a 16:36. Close to a PR but I still thought I could do better.

The best thing to do is to just learn from your mistakes. Next time, be more prepared and turn the bad race into something to help you remember for the next time.

At my school, we take 2-3 weeks off between XC and track. After that break, we always have about 2 weeks of just east runs and we lift weights for tone. It seems to add a nice base for when we start doing circuts and speed ladders before meets start up.

In track, I'm a two miler. Once a week I run 3 sets of 3 300's at about 50-54 seconds with 45 seconds between 300's and 3 minutes between sets. Also, a long run of about 20-25% of my weekly milage is a weekly thing. The rest is filled with easy(recovery) runs and sometimes we do things like mile repeats if there isnt a track meet durring the week.