The Official Blog of OC Athletics
Monday, September 25, 2006
MICHELLE LAIR, Women’s Cross Country
I would have to say that women’s x-country has done exceptionally well despite having several injuries to deal with. Tara is coming back from injury. Kate is running mostly on the grass in prevention of injury. Heather is recovering from some pretty severe blisters on the back of her feet. Both of us also are attempting to complete our senior years without going crazy. Carolyn is still getting into x-country shape coming off her third year of track. Riata, our little freshman, is still adjusting to the Oklahoma climate and elevation, much different from where she is lived in Montana.
Having a lot of experience on the team this year is probably one of the reasons for our success. We all have run against these challenging courses and teams. The only thing we have to do this year is to improve on each and every one of them in comparison to last year. Having a smaller team this year also has impacted us. We all have to step it up in practice and really focus on our health so we do not get injured because we do need five to score.
At OBU on the 23rd, I ran the fastest 5k in my college history. Riata ran her fastest time and is improving each and every meet. Heather and Kate are running faster than they were last year at this time. Tara and Carolyn continue to improve and come back to their original times of last year as well.
After running in three meets, I feel we really do not have that far to go and we are all really working hard to reach our peak performance as a team. Every meet, the team runs faster times and closes the gap between runners. At this rate, we have a chance of becoming a really close-grouped team that runs fast times and finishes with low scores. I hope we all can run our best times and have a great time in x-country this year.