Race Recap: Victor Lopez Bayou Classic @ Rice University

Rice Univesity. One of the top schools in Texas. Very similar to Trinity, except they are Division 1 in Athletics and have a few more international students than we do. I always like this meet because of the strong amount of competition we face every year. I think Trinity and Southwestern were the only Division 3 teams there. Most of the schools were Division 1, including UT Women, SFA, U of H, Texas State, SHSU, and UTSA. Anyway, being a two day meet, most of the high school stuff and college distance events were on the first day. This week I raced the 10k, along with 8 of my teammates. 25 laps on the track. The longest race we have during track season. Since the 10k is such a long race, Rice decided to combine the Men and Women races to save on time. So we had about 40 people on the track, it was pretty crowded. It was also pretty humid, which is expected for Houston.

During the warmup, my legs felt amazing. We timed our warmup perfectly. 3 miles, leg swings, dynamics, put on my flats, run some strides and I was ready to go, but when we got back to the track, the womens 5k was delayed by 20 minutes. I was mad about that, but I just relaxed and realized it wasn't a big deal.

The first 5k played out well. There was a group of about 7 of us up front, 2 UTSA, 2 DBU, 1 Tx State, and Pancho and I. I took the lead for a few laps in there also after the halfway point. We came through 5k in 16:01, I was pretty tired by this point, but my body started to feel better after that. After 4 miles, the group started to spread out some. I ran 32:54 and got fifth place. I'm content with the race overall, not happy though. For our first one, I felt like Pancho and I made solid moves and kept ourselves in the race. I made my list of things to do to prepare for the end of the season and I'm excited for what the team is going to do by the time conference comes around 4 weeks from now.