In Her Own Words: Ashley Erba

In Her Own Words: Ashley Erba - Journal #4

The last three weeks sure have flown by!  It feels like State was just the other day and yet there’s only one week until Footlocker Midwest.

 Last Monday, the Lady Tiger XC team had our awards ceremony.  It was weird to be 'closing down’ the season when I’m still in training.  However, the night was fun and I really enjoyed seeing all the girls again after not seeing some of them for weeks.  We all ate dinner together and wrote each other notes.  Award-wise, Anna and I were co-MVP’s!

 After State I took a couple of days off and then started my running back up again.  Now that we had a little more time between races, as opposed to the tournament season, we’ve been building up mileage more and doing less speed work.  Starting back up running after State, it took me a few days for my legs to loosen up but we’ve had some really good workouts so far and I am loving training; I can’t seem to wait for the next practice.  This is exciting to me because I know many times, runners struggle with post season training being boring or just not that much fun.  One thing that has been helpful is that I’m not training alone.  Anna and Brooke are also running Footlocker Midwest and then two or three of our other teammates have been showing up most days to continue their training even though they won’t be competing anymore.  Training without an entire team does have its benefits; we’ve been able to move our practices to different places, like tomorrow we’re going to a state park to run some hills which will be really fun.  As far as the training climate goes, the weather has certainly cooled down a bit, we had our first “snow” last week!  But mostly it is just unpredictable which can be frustrating when it messes with the workouts our coaches planned.  I have to be appreciative of the brisk, wet weather, however because I know that on race day, this is what it will be like.               

Racing in Kenosha will be different for me but I know it will be fun!  It will be my first out of state race as well as my first national type race.  Since I haven’t been on the course before, I have been trying to get the best feel for it that I can.  Seeing race videos and asking other runners who have been there has been really helpful for me.  Because State and Footlocker are four weeks apart, my coaches had me, Anna and Brooke run a road 5k last Saturday.  I was looking forward to this chance to clock a good time.  The first part of the race went really well before I missed a turn and ended up on a highway… haha.  It was definitely unfortunate because I thought I was holding a good pace, when I went home I charted where I had run and I saw that, indeed, I had kept up the pace I thought I was which was a big confidence boost.  That is one area I have improved in this season: feeling my pace rather than just relying on a watch.  I think this will help me a lot as I go into the next few races because I will need to be able to run tactical races and not let myself get out of control with the hype of national races. 

Speaking of national races… I’m very excited right now because I get the chance to go to the NCAA National Championships on Monday.  This will be a really great experience for me to see some of the best D1 colleges in the country run against each other.  As I’m starting to look into where I’d like to go in college, seeing the best schools in action can only be an asset.  It will also be incredible to see all of the girls that I’ve been looking up to for  years race each other!

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