After a very difficult and muddy return to racing this weekend, I was ready to hit training a little harder this week. Katie and I had run the Des Plaines River Trail at 7 a.m. on Saturday, and it was beautiful, the river misting in the cold morning air. I was eager to hit the trail again on Monday when coach assigned us to an easy distance day of 5 to 6 miles.

By the time Gabby and I had trotted the first mile to the trail, I was feeling pretty good. Each half-mile marker passed I felt better and better and wanted to go further. I knew we had passed the three-mile mark, and we were flying, running less than 8 minutes per mile pace. We finally decided to turn around and ran home about as fast as we made it out.

"You okay, Gabby?" I asked, worried I was pushing the pace too hard. She nodded she was. She later confided in me, "I didn't want to say anything because I thought you were in the zone, and I don't like it when people put things in my mind, but didn't it seem like the way back was slightly uphill?"

When we got back, I nearly jumped for joy. My speed and conditioning had returned to me, and I am so excited to race this weekend.

There's a lot of problems with distance runners. They get this mentality that pain is nothing, and they just need to keep going.

My lower legs had been bothering me for awhile. Then last Tuesday I started feeling exhausted all day long as well. Coach told me to hit the stationary bike for a few days. I haven't run since then, so I haven't felt like I had anything to write about in my blog. I missed running on the river trail on the first day of fall, missed my favorite workout (800 repeats), and missed a trip to the beach with the team.

But yesterday I woke up and felt refreshed. At practice Coach finally allowed me to run a half mile on the grass, and I felt almost no pain. This morning my roommate (who used to run with us) was telling me that when her brother ran for another college, coaches weren't really concerned about you personally, and a lot of the runners would just get burned out. That's why her brother quit.

I'm looking forward to running again soon, but in the mean time, I wanted to say thank you to Coach Elliott for personally caring about my overall health, while still making the team the best women runners Dominican has ever seen.

This race was the epitome of my week--with the stressfulness of school, my body was screaming "Let me out of here and let me run!" And paired with a beautiful Aurora course, I probably enjoyed it a little too much.

Erika and I stayed together on the first mile, eyeing the conference contenders just a few hundred feet in front of us. I was so afraid that my legs would hurt like they did during Elmhurst that it really affected my times. When I heard our first mile split (7:18), I knew I was enjoying the race too much and tried to kick it up.

Erika really pushed us through the third mile and we made a lot of explosive bursts past groups of girls, including the Aurora runners, our biggest competition. I didn't get that sub-27 that I wanted, but my final time was three minutes faster than last year's finish. Next week, I won't be afraid of my legs hurting, and I will run sub-27!

Me (in the middle) with Erika on my left.

September 4, 2009, Elmhurst, Illinois

Race day! My nerves were getting to me, but I promised that after a nap there would only be positive energy. I ran the warm-up with the girls, tied up my spikes, stretched out and went up to the starting line. I felt totally mellow on the line.

After the gun went off, I held back and controlled myself for a 6:58 1st mile split, kicked harder at the beginning of the second mile and passed a lot of people during the next mile and over the hill. On the downhill my legs hurt all over, and I really didn't have a kick. I felt exhausted and wondered how far my teammates were from me. Then Erika came up behind me and pushed me through the final run over the bridge. I improved a minute and a half from last year, which is good enough.

Nothing compares to sharing the post-race high with friends; we went out for pizza afterwards, truly able to celebrate our first race because we had beaten every other conference team!