I started my travels on Thursday morning…..really early….4am to be exact, for a flight from Philly to San Diego…but with a stop in Minnesota. While waiting for my plane in Philly, I saw Sam Dalembert formally of the Sixers traveling to Sacramento.
Arrived in San Diego around 1:30pm PST…there was a Foot Locker rep waiting for a group of us to take us to the hotel. Arriving at the Hotel del Coronado a little bit later we all checked in, picked up our running gear, shoes, uniforms and bags…I made it to my room…met my roommate Thomas Graham who was from North Carolina …we took a few minutes to unpack and then headed out for a run.
We had some organized events on Thursday night…Friday was a walk through of the course and a run…this day the hills at Balboa didn’t seem imposing…nothing like Sunken Meadow, Hershey or even our training site in Tyler State Park. I thought the Sunken Meadow course in Long Island used for the regional race was a lot harder.
We had more organized events on Friday after the walk through…pasta dinner and lights out early.
Saturday morning we boarded the buses…off to Balboa Park. The whole atmosphere was really something different…the TV cameras, press, spectators…Hershey for states is louder and maybe has more spectators but this was really cool. They had a mega video screen set up to show the entire race as it happened…
Congratulations to Angel on making it to SD. The girls race went off….
We were then introduced…and off goes the gun. I fell back way too early…got squeezed…and tried to fight back into the pack. But the course is tight through the trees and made it harder…it wasn’t my best race of the year but no excuses… just didn‘t get it done that day. Congratulations to my fellow PA runner Zach Hebda who finished a strong 18th.
After the race we all headed back to the hotel..played a little football on the beach…swam in the ice cold Pacific and enjoyed the Saturday night banquet.
All in all it was a great experience from the regional meet to nationals…wouldn’t have traded it for anything…I wanted to thank my coach, Coach Marrington for taking the trip to support me. And also my family. The hotel was great and the people from Foot Locker were really great to all of us…can’t thank them enough.