Killer race today. We got there super early so we just chilled and talked to Dom for a while before we had to warm up and stuff. After we got our hip numbers we did a bunch of strides and got lined up. The gun went off and I fell to the back of the race immediately. I came through in 68 then started moving up a little bit, and caught up to Lil' Warner. We kind of ran the rest of the race together and slowly worked our way up. My next few splits were 2:19, 3:32, 4:44, 5:55, 7:09. At this point I realized I was still on pace to qualify for state and made a surge on the backstretch with 700 to go, and passed Josh Thatcher and another guy. Josh kind of hit my back, but I think it was more of an encouragement hit than a mean one. Anyways, I came through with one lap to go at 8:24, and kicked as hard as I could. I passed Joe Benson, then just tried to hang on to Lil' Warner for as long as possible, but he pulled away on the homestretch. I ended up running 9:33, which was an 11 second PR, and I qualified for state! This track season has been kind of a bummer, so this race was a much needed breakthrough.
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