What a great cross country weekend! This weekend the Lakewood Ranch team and I ran in the Mountain Dew Invitational at the University of Florida. We all stayed in a hotel the night before since Gainesville is a three hour drive from Lakewood Ranch. That always makes for great fun and bonding time as a team. I was very excited and focused about this race throughout this week. As a team, we were excited about racing on the Gator campus again and then the opportunity to watch the college races, which is really inspiring before the start of our race. I knew I and the rest of the team would be faced with great competition, similar to the past two weekends. My number one goal was to stay relaxed and run my race. Honestly, the course was a little harder than what I remembered from the past two years. The gradual, steep, inclined hills definitely made the race challenging, in addition to a delayed start, running around 9:45 am. We all were facing Florida’s hottest part of the day. All in all, I was pleased with my performance finishing 2nd just behind Shelby Davidson from Cocoa Beach. In order to improve, I know I need to continue to stay focused and keep training hard. And of course give 110% in everything I do (my motto I live by).
As a team, this was our third year running at UF and we were psyched. This year, just like every other year we knew UF was going to be a highly competitive invitational; on a tough golf course. Last year we were runner ups only eight points behind Estero. Estero is such a talented and hard working team and we know they will always push each of us every race. Every week our goal is to improve from the last. We continue to close the gap each week. I am so proud of everyone’s performance from this weekend and know that we are on the right track, we just need to continue to work hard.
Next weekend, is the Flrunners.com Invitational and everyone is anticipating this traditionally fast, fun course! Facing similar competition from the Mountain Dew Invitational, it will be an intense race. I am excited because this is my favorite course throughout the season. I can’t wait to see what I’ll be sharing next week!
More On Olivia
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In Her Own Words: Olivia Ortiz (Article) My name is Olivia Ortiz and I am a junior at Lakewood Ranch. First, I want to say thank you to flrunners for letting me contribute to their incredible website! What a great opportunity and honor to be apart of. What an amazing start to the 2011 season with the first two races having intense competition, forcing everyone to get into race mode. Opening race last week was the Déjà vu Invitational in Tampa also know as the “mudfest”. - 2011-09-19 11:40:00
