Day before the meet…The women’s team almost didn’t make it to Greensboro on Friday night and we almost had to pack six people into a five person vehicle. Mary Buchner saved the day and let us use her “green machine” so we could make the trip up. Even though we were an hour behind schedule we were still able to check out the course and have a solid pre-meet run.  After our short run we had a great pasta dinner near our hotel. My team usually likes to keep it pretty relaxed the day before and chill out; but we always talk about how nervous we are.  With this being the first race everyone was pretty anxious about how fit we are and how well we’ll stack up against other teams. Here are some the thoughts that run through our mind the day before:

  “I can’t believe our season starts tomorrow”
  “Are we going to get lost on the course?’
  “Do you think we’ll do well?”
  “Man I’m so freaking nervous!”
  “I can’t believe we actually took Mary’s van”

Race day…The women’s race started pretty late for a Saturday, but most of us didn’t mind because we got to sleep in a little bit. We got to the course around 9 a.m. and were trying to scope out the other teams. We did our usual warm-up run and dynamics and then that feeling started to sink in. That feeling is like a rock in the bottom of your stomach and just sits there. We all got to the line and I told everyone that it’s our first race and the most important thing today is that all five of us must cross the finish line.

I’m not going to lie, my mind was all over the place and I might have been a bit scared. We had to believe in each other and believe in ourselves that we can accomplish something today. We even had a group of supporters out there from Ashlyn’s family and Coker’s own Dr. Cuppett came to cheer us on. We even had an inspirational message sent to us by Melinda Holland. All the support is truly appreciated and needed. All five of us finished and all of our times were somewhat disappointing, but we got through it.

With five runners we placed four in the top fifteen and we ended up placing second as a team. I finished 3rd, Ashlyn placed 8th, Alex placed 10th, Caitlyn placed 13th and Angela pulled through and placed 30th. The Lady Cobras haven’t brought home team hardware since the USC meet in 2007. I think it was after all a successful day.

The after thoughts…None of us were really satisfied with our time. All of us were about a minute or so slower than where we thought we should be. We definitely underestimated how tough the course really was. When we look at the race we figured that we did slow down but we passed a lot of people and the others slowed down even more. These are the meets that you have to not think about the time you ran and just concentrate on how well you placed. Personally, I would sacrifice a good time for a top three finish any day.  Plus we placed right behind a D-I school so we have to be proud of that. As runners we are always unsatisfied but we have things to work on and we’ll be better prepared next time. If you’re around come check us out on September 18th at UNC-Pembroke as we take on our first 6K.  And sorry no new school record yet and as always happy running!

Your running enthusiast,

Kendyl Seawright