Track and Field Blogs - Kenny Woo

The picture attached to this blog is from the division championship this year. It was my first time actually counting in an actual championship race for my team. To be honest, I completely blew it. With a large lead, I ran somewhere in the 2:07-2:11 range and handed off in second. People had said "I tried my hardest", which I did, but it's not good enough. Replacing me with a 2:01 leg just got our 4x800 team a ticket to the state meet. It doesn't exactly make me feel good how we can lose it at divisions, replace me and qualify for states. (Congratulations to them though, good job)

Though my last blog said I was ending a successful season, I've decided today that it was definitely not. Now I'm not going to go ahead and whine about how I could've run faster, but I'm going to say I have a hell of a lot more drive than I did before.

I don't want to let myself be the alternate anymore. I don't want to have to go to meets knowing that I "might run" if somebody better than me gets hurt. And in addition to that, I don't want to be the slow leg either. I don't want to be the have a PR 8 seconds above the rest of the team and ruin the race for everyone else. I don't want them to feel pressured that they have to run faster to make up for me. Though my teammates haven't exactly blamed me, I know it would be a hell of a lot more fun if we had won that race.

So how do I solve this? My teammates will laugh, but I need to fight to be the best. During Spring, I was not motivating myself to be the fastest on the team, but I was motivating myself to count, set some PRs, score points, and sneak onto the relay. I had basically told myself "these people on the team are better than me, and I'm not going to try to keep up with them". That doesn't stand anymore. That won't make me great. I don't want my coach to say, "Oh, maybe I'll put Kenny in this event because there's nobody else to run there.", I want it to be "I'll put Kenny in this event because he's GOOD at it"

For my team's Sophomores, we have a kid who went all-county and runs in the 4:30s, and a kid who probably could've also went all county without injury. They wouldn't believe that I have the guts right now to come after them, but I warn here that I certainly do.  My natural talent might not quite match up, but I will be as close to my full potential as possible.

To conclude this, I'll say that I have confidence in my team to win counties for XC and qualify for states, but we don't by some miracle, I WILL make it to the State Meet.