I really had to work to get all of my Computer Science stuff done before I left on Wednesday. It was literally down to the last minute. It was kind of ironic that our hotel in Philly had internet access, although I would have had to pay 10 bucks to use it. Our hotel was right downtown, which was unusual from what I’ve heard, because, in the past, our team has stayed in New Jersey. It was real nice sleeping in a decent bed without all the dorm noise to keep me up. We got in pretty late since we left after dinner and I didn’t wake up until after 10 the next morning.
For breakfast, several of us went to a diner down the street that had these really good muffins. They were toasted too. I’ve never had toasted muffins before. I also had some pancakes too, which may have been a mistake, for I was racing. I have a lot of trouble with eating and running. I wound up not eating until after I raced, which was after 9:30 that night. The rest of the morning and afternoon I spent messing with my computer because a sign in the hotel lobby claimed there was wireless internet access. When I finally got the computer to recognize the network, it went through some sort of proxy that prompted me to enter my credit card number. Forget that.
We left for the track around 4:30, because the steeplechasers had to be there earlier. Ed and I, who were in the 5000, and Charlie and Jacob, who were in the 10000, all went to Jacob’s mom’s hotel room, which was less than a mile from the track. Ed and I stayed there for an hour until the track was opened up for everyone (for some reason not everyone was allowed in before six). We wound up sitting in the stands for a while anyway when we got there because they were running behind by more than a half hour. Ed and I watched Mike and Adam run and then we did our warmup around the Penn campus.
The race went pretty well, except that there were around 50 in the heat, all crammed into five lanes. Someone fell at the gun and we had to start over. I had a good first and last mile, but I was alone in the middle, so I wound up slowing down a bit. I’ll have to work on that for next time. I wound up qualifying for NCAA regionals and got another IC4A qualifying time in 14:22.
After I cooled down I wound up walking 10 blocks to find a place to eat. The only place I could find was a McDonald’s: not my first choice. I finally got back around 11:00 and watched the finish of the 10k.
On Friday I woke up around 10 and ran with Jacob, Charlie, Adam, and Mike along the Schuykill for nine miles. It wasn’t bad considering we were in the middle of downtown Philadelphia — a trail went along the river and wasn’t interrupted by lights or streets. It was a nice day too. Afterwards we walked to a market of sorts where there was all kinds of interesting food — I had been there several years ago with my family. We all got cheese steaks and sucked them down in only a few minutes — we had to get to the track in time to watch the DMR. We wound up asking someone on the street how to get to the subway. It wasn’t far, only a block and it dumped us out a few streets from the track.
The DMR ran just under ten minutes, which was a good time for them, but I don’t think everyone was happy. Charlie, Adam, and I hung out in the stadium for the rest of the day, watching some high school events. It was a real nice day so it was nice just to sit outside and relax. There weren’t too many people in the stadium and even so we went to the upper deck between some of the more interesting events and just relaxed. We wound up taking the subway back to the hotel because we had leftover tokens. Besides, the van was full anyway.
After our meeting at 7 PM, some of us walked down the street to a pizza place. I split a pizza with Charlie. It seems really odd, but he ate a lot that night. We just had those cheese steaks at 2:30, and then we go to the pizza place where he eats half the pizza and then continues to finish off everyone else’s food. Later we got ice cream and on top of that he practically inhaled a donut.
I also saw John Q that night. It was one of those movies my dad rented last summer and I would watch some of it with him until it was time for me to go to bed. I had to get up at 5:30 to go to run and then ultimately go to work the next morning, so it was imperative that I go to bed before 10 or else I would feel crappy all the next day. I had only seen the beginning and was suprised that he took everyone in the hospital hostage. I didn’t really think of it as an action movie. It wasn’t bad, though. Before I turned off the TV, I saw the weather reports for the next day — the weatherman said that there were going to be “pockets of heavy rain in places like Williamsburg.” That figures. Even when we aren’t in Williamsburg you know it’s raining there. It’s not supposed to rain that much. In the summer they were whining about a drought, and now it is the opposite. In my Physical Geography class we had to look at some local well data. Needless to say the water levels for the wells are at record highs and are only a few feet below the surface level. Anyways, the weather was supposed to be bad in Philly, too.
And it was. 50 degrees and pouring down rain the Saturday morning. The same crew and myself went out for our long run before we had to check out of the hotel and go to the track. It was only 13 miles but the weather and my soreness from the race didn’t help. We just went along the same path and just extended it another couple miles. At one point I could see something in the path ahead of me, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was. Suddenly, Jacob yelled out “Snake!” and the rest of us practically jumped ten feet into the air. Of course, it was a joke — the object was just a piece of plastic twine. In hindsight it was pretty funny though.
At the track the weather didn’t get much better and we had to stay there for four hours. The stands were packed despite the weather. The 4 x mile team was in the second heat and was one of the first events we saw. In between that and the 4 x 800 there were several “USA vs. the world” relays ranging from 400 to 1600 meters. stacked with pro/olympic teams. USA won them all, and many of them by a landslide. What was a little odd was all of the people that were rooting for the Jamaican teams. There seemed to be hundreds of Jamaican flags in the stands. Obviously all of the people waving the flags weren’t Jamaican. Why would they be rooting for them? I didn’t get it.
Our 4×800 team ran well and placed second in their heat. Soon after we and thousands of other people herded out of the stadium and packed into the vans. I wound up draining the remainder of the battery on my laptop watching The Matrix — I hadn’t recharged it since I left. Five hours later we got back, but not before we stopped at The Gas Station From Hell. We always stop to get gas at the end of a trip. Everyone is bouncing off the walls because we’ve been in there forever, but we have to get gas before we get back.
And now it’s exam time. Only one this week, on Wednesday, but next week will be bad. I will have to study hard this week to be ready. I didn’t do much today — I just did the laundry and messed with PlanetSide — it took some time to download all the patches.
It’ll be great when school is finished.
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