A Festival Fit For Champions.

We were all as prepared as we could be for the mud and rain and wet that presented itself to us on Saturday. There's something catchy in the air at a big meet like this that gets everyone excited, regardless of the weather. I love being surrounded by 924 other athletes getting ready to race, or whatever crazy number it was this year. The day started out with the Canadian and American national anthems being sung beautifully by my fellow ARC running camp buddy, Grant Richards of Belfast. Lovely job!! The race order went unseeded, freshman, seeded (girls/boys respectively in each category). Watching the freshmen boy's race was really sad; there was one racer near the end who did not have spikes on, and was slip-and-sliding all over the part before the man-made hills. As the day progressed, it only got muddier (I refrain from saying "worse" because mud is what we live for). When the seeded girls were only a half mile into the race, we must have looked like some splatter-paint art project. Regardless of the conditions, the first mile on Belfast's course always proves to be incredibly fast, and although I was considerably back from the leader, Abbey Leonardi, I still managed to split a sub six first mile. During the race, I remember being a tad bit confused as to why I was running amongst fellow athletes that had previously run low 19 minute 5k's- especially when I clocked in at a 20:31- but had the conditions been a bit more ideal for PR's, I would have most likely crushed my LPR by over a minute. The idea of that is encouraging, but also makes me a bit stressed knowing that I still haven't actually run that time. When I crossed the line 12th, all I felt like doing was sitting down, despite the fact that every inch of grass out there that day was smothered in double the amount of mud. I didn't really care, but my uniform noticeably required a bit of washing after that meet. ARC really represented in terms of the top boys and girls teams overall that day. MDI girls and Falmouth boys won; a lot of those people had been fellow campers with me this summer in Acadia National Park. Also, nice job to Katherine Gunther, who placed in the top ten in the girls freshman race.
KKNW, Addie
Also, check out the videos from the meet, which can be found on the links below:
http://www.youtube.com/user/runsub5#p/u/2/asrrE8WAgzo (Boys seeded)
http://www.youtube.com/user/runsub5#p/u/1/Ixdsk5q8V6c (Girls seeded)