Arizona CC Journals #2 - Rex Woodbury Journal

 Milesplit Arizona Cross Country Journals  

We begin our cross country season athlete journals with Catalina Foothills senior Rex Woodbury.  Rex returns this season as one of the top distance runners in the state.  His 3rd place finish at the 4A I State Meet helped his team to a State Championship, in fact, the team was the fastest at the State Meet with the fastest combined and average time.  Rex also placed 2nd in the 3200 last spring and is the top returning 1600/mile runner for the upcoming track season.  Keep checking back as we follow Rex during his final high school cross country season.

 

Journal Entry #1

 

 

Rex Woodbury

(Sr., Catalina Foothills)

 

Journal Entry #2  (October 18, 2010)

 

Hello there Milesplit! I hope everyone’s season is going well as we approach the biggest meets of the fall. It’s been a long time since mylast journal, and a lot has happened! I shall start at the beginning...

 

Unfortunately, right after turning in my last journal, I became pretty sick. Despite being very careful about sleep, eating right, washing my hands, and avoiding sick friends (sometimes a little rudely), I’d gotten the welcome-back-to-school virus everyone seems to catch and had to miss around 7 to 8 days of training. This was very frustrating, but I knew I was in great shape and if I got healthy again I’d be ready to go. The week of Twilight I was back to training and was really excited about mixing it up with the state’s best. I’d been aiming for this race all summer and love running under the lights on a fast course (not to mention the fireworks, dance floor, etc!).

 

On Friday afternoon, my dad and I drove up to the course early because of an accident on I-10 and ended up hanging out at Barnes and Noble in the air-conditioning for a while, doing some hardcore visualization!  We got to the course after dark and, after several hundred phone calls to my coach and teammates, were able to finally locate the Foothills camp. My team and I were pumped for our race and got after it.

 

However, this is where things stopped going so well. In the first hundred meters I knew that my body was not doing well and I was struggling to maintain pace with the leaders in the first quarter mile. I don’t really know how to describe how I felt other than my entire body was just feeling “off” and completely exhausted. My back and hamstrings started tightening up and soon enough I was practically running backwards through the pack! Needless to say, the rest of the night was pretty miserable. I was so disappointed after having worked so hard for so long, and as a team we were simply embarrassed by our performance. I left the meet with my dad immediately following the race and spent the remainder of the weekend wallowing in self-pity and frustration :( However, I would like to thank all those who offered consolation and condolence to me after the race, particularly my biggest supporter of all, my dad, the oh-so-wonderful Margot Kelly, my coach, and the awesome Xavier girls I talked to after (Daylee, Sarah, and Bre). And congrats to Billy Orman, Sarah Fakler, Alhambra, andXavier on their big wins!

 

My general rule about stressing and worrying is I ask myself “Will this affect me in 3 years?” and the answer is usually “No,” meaning it is not worth spending too much time dwelling on. Although I was a little worried about the race affecting my recruiting, I tried to shake it off and re-focus on the rest of the season. On Monday, we did 3x1mile, but I averaged around 30 seconds slower than I had for 4x1mile a couple weeks before. I knew something must be wrong with my body and took a blood test later in the day. I was relieved to see that I didn’t have mono like I suspected, and also relieved to see that something was wrong and I had a pretty bad flu lingering in my system.

 

The next few days I took it easy and slowly came back to health. I was able to win a dual meet by a good margin and run faster on the Kennedy Park course than the winning time at Los Mesquites a couple weeks before. This helped give me my confidence back and training started to go well again. A week later I had my last ever home meet (a very bittersweet event), and, despite temps in the 90s, was able to run well. I ran 20 seconds faster than I did in September, won by 46 seconds, and led my team to a 1-2-3-5-6 finish! I also broke our course record (subtracting the 300 meters added on due to construction) and had fun at the tear-jerking, yet hilarious senior night festivities!

 

I guess I should also probably touch on that whole college thing going on right now! I would like to go out East for college, and I want to go to a strong academic school with a strong running program. Most importantly, I want to find a school that is a good fit for me and where I am comfortable. In September, I visited Princeton and really loved meeting the coach and team as well as seeing the campus. This past weekend, I took my official visit to Dartmouth and had an awesome time with the team, coaches, other recruits, and blissfully cold weather! Right after my race at State, I’ll be flying out to New York City to visit Columbia. There are also several other schools still in the mix, but I’d like to make my decision early so I can relaxxxx and let the senioritis take hold!

 

My next big race is Mt. Sac, and then I’ll be racing Sectionals, State, and Nike Southwest. I’m really focusing on getting 8+ hours of sleep, taking my recovery days easy so I don’t burn out, and going hard on workout days and long on long runs to keep the strength up as we near the important races. Now is the time when all that hard work starts coming to fruition, so make sure to be an animal out there and give it your all! Just go out there having faith in your training and knowing that you will give it your best no matter what, and there is no reason to get nervous. All fun and games from here on out...

 

Good luck to everyone out there and I hope to see you all on the course!

 

~Rex Woodbury