This week on Our Run Club the Podcast Ray and I spoke about our Best and Worst Race/Run Experience. I was absolutely glued to the edge of my seat listening to Razor give his description of his best race ever and it reads just as good as it sounds. Check it out below.

Ray:

My best race experience? It's like asking me, you know, which Beatles album is my favorite or something like that because I just can't. I can't narrow it down to one.

There's a lot of different events and race experiences and stuff, you know, positive and not so positive but I would say one of my best was my best was an all conference meet when I was high school. That's a good one to go to. This one was all conference and we were all rivals. And this was before going into this state meet, the state sectionals they called it, all my rivals were there and I was running the 5000 and so there were a couple of guys who were slated to come and probably win that race ya know, I was one of em.

Eric:

Number one seed!

Ray:

Well, you know, there are few guys and the race got off to a fast start and it's just I felt really good that going into that that race and I was feeling really confident really had a good positive mindset going into the race and this one guy, his name is Dave, he's one of our rivals. He's from a rival team and he was considered one of the favorites and he was a speedy guy, tiny guy.

So he blasts out and he's got a nice comfortable lead throughout most of the race. I'm in second and basically he blasted out so hard early in the race. It was just going to be like well you know we'll try to reel him in and mid race I gained a little ground and I'm kinda focusing on my zone so I was like paying attention to me, not going out too hard to catch him because I knew that if I did that, I might not be able to maintain that pace right just kept my pace stayed very disciplined. I mean sometimes I can get carried away with the emotion of a race, maybe go off too hard. That was my thing. So in this particular situation I just like focused on what I was doing.

Eric:

Did you have other people around you?

Ray:

No, actually I was solo in second people dropped back pretty quick. And so he's out there. He’s got a good hundred meter lead. So mid race I start to reel him in bit by bit, and but I can't really see him, everyone's cheering and the coaches, you know, coaching and I'm just kind of in the zone just doing my thing and bit by bit. I'm getting there. I'm getting right I'm gaining on him, gaining on him and I I'm just feeling great

Eric:

And are people like losing their minds?

Ray:

People start to lose their minds at one point, things start to get a little intense you know with like a mile to go.
People are getting pumped up a lot even the throwers are coming down and I'm feeling kind of like I'm floating right. So I'm feeling like this is great you know, totally in the zone can't feel a thing not worried about my breathing. I'm not feeling any distress, you know, closer and closer to him, we get down to like, say, a half mile and you know he's got a decent lead on me, but I could tell that he starts slow down a little bit. He's starting to look back at this point you know you don't look back you keep going.

I'm not worried. I know nobody's behind me and if they are whatever I'm not even thinking about that you know last lap. I'm like, you know, 50 meters behind him and gun goes off and I'm flying behind him and I know that there's no way that he's not going to lose this race come around the last turn and everything felt like it was in slow motion. I totally felt like I was floating and I was just like, you know, dramatic shot of me taking him around the last turn fly out and just blast out last hundred meters is like you know sprint it in and I won the race and it was really cool it was great! It was one of the very few times that I ever heard my coach like raise his voice and excitement and he was a really mellow guy never he wasn't he wasn't a screamer. He wasn’t a yeller or anything like that, but this time he was excited he knew you know that I could do this. But it was great. Everything about this was just like a movie!