In His Own Words: Corey Slaven

As I lay in bed listening to hip hop music, I look back on the race I had this past Saturday. I think of all the things I would have done differently and I think about all of the things I did right. Maybe I went out a little fast. Maybe holding a 5:20 mile wouldn’t have hurt that bad. Maybe I should have kicked a little harder for tenth place. Whatever could have happened doesn’t make what did happen any less significant. 

 

The Katie Caples Invitational is one of my favorite races. The first time I ever raced a 5k was during the 2012 Katie Caples invitational. I was a nervous, fresh, and inexperienced runner, running in the elite race. I ran a 19:02, and our team placed fifth overall. This year was nothing like the year before it. The course was a little different, our team was much more conditioned, and our times were much faster. The race started out in a chaotic rush to the sharp, and intimidating first turn. It was dark, and dirty. Everyone scrambled to try and end up in the front. The race itself was strange. Strong runners were tiring very easily, dropping back slowly, but surely. I noticed a lot of runners not using tangents and used it to my advantage, and passed multiple runners using this strategy. I was in the top twenty early on in the race. I remember coming up on Creekside High School junior Zack Bias not long after the first mile. I was looking for him since I had developed a sort of rivalry with him during track season. I worked off of him for a short period of time, and ended up passing him. I kept going, running the race by myself. I am usually running close to one of my teammates, so this strategy felt alien to me. I kept my pace, picking off other runners as I proceeded. The third mile came faster than I expected, and I started moving faster. I hit the track and began my kick. As my legs burned and my surroundings became a blur, a familiar sight came into my peripheral vision. Zack Bias, and his crazy kick was blowing right past me. I was out kicked in the last 100 meters, beat out of tenth and placed into eleventh.

 

I didn’t fret though, I had met my goal. I had just broken 17:00, running a 16:56. My team mate Ryan Aponte finished right behind me putting him in 12th place. I remember mumbling nonsense as one of the nice volunteers struggled to get the chip off of my shoe. “I quadruple knotted it!” I tried to exclaim, as the volunteer made no progress in removing the chip. It probably sounded like mush, as the exhaustion I felt was apparent. I walked away, sweaty and tired, sporting a huge smile on my face. I soon found out that my team mate Noah Kemp placed second overall. This made me ecstatic. We came to the race with the right mind set, and our team really put it out there. That is exactly what we came there to do. Our team ended up in second place. We didn’t win the meet, but we came close enough to it. The girls’ team won their race, which was awesome. The JV team had a load of success as well, as many personal records surfaced that evening. It was a successful night overall.

As I lay here listening to The Fugees, thinking about last Saturday night I am content with the results. I shouldn’t be too content though. There is still a lot of hard work to be done, a lot of miles, intervals, and hot work outs. That is the only way we will see the results we desire. We will surely put in more hard work this week as we prepare for the meet we will end up at this coming Saturday.  I hope to see you out there at the University of Florida this weekend for the Mountain Dew Invitational. If you see me, feel free to say hello. I am always happy to meet new runners. I’m that goofy long haired blonde kid in the maroon. You can’t miss me. Until next week flrunners… work hard, and keep your mind strong –