Breaking Records

As hard as I've been trying I'm still not getting anywhere close to breaking the Spooner High School 1600m record of 5:13. But on Saturday, I did set a personal record and also, I think, a Spooner High School record.
Personal Record: Fastest 1500m time ever run in Belgium.
Spooner High School Record #1: Fastest 1500m time ever run in Belgium. (To be honest I'm not one hundred percent sure on this one, but I think it's a pretty safe bet).
Impressive isn't it? I have to say that I feel after working so long towards this goal, I definitely deserved to finally reach it.

I must be getting a little spoiled by living in this tiny country, because I found the three hours it took us to drive to Duffel, Belgium kind of a drag. It felt like a long time to sit in the car. To think that I regularly ride that far just to go to Mall of America... Plus, once we were almost there, one of the other girls from our team called and said that they were completely stuck in a huge traffic jam. So then we had to turn around and go back to the Netherlands and then drive back into Belgium with a different road. It's not a stereotype that the roads in Belgium are worse than the roads in the Netherlands. I never got a chance to find out if the stereotypes about Belgium people that Dutch people have are true. Except how they talk- they do sound funny when they talk.
My first thought when we walked into the track at Duffel was that the track was huge. Seriously, it looked way bigger than any other track that I've seen before. Of course that's not possible because every track is 400 meters and 400m is 400m- even in Belgium.
Since we were about two hours early for the 1500m race, I had about an hour when I got to sit and watch the other races all nervously and not do anything else. Then all of us who were going to run the 1500m warmed up together. There were three series of about 20 girls. That's 60 girls who were going to run the 1500m. I was in the third serie, which I wasn't complaining about, I really don't feel like it's neccessary for me to race against girls who run a 4:30 1500m time. The start was brutal though. Everyone pushed and shoved and we were stuck in this huge mob of girls that took about a lap and a half to get unclogged. The pace was still fast, but it was stressful having to watch out for everyone else.
In the end I ran the same time that I ran in the last 1500m race I did. I was disappointed because after the first race I thought for sure that I could run much faster. It had felt faster too because I managed to pick up the pace in the last 300m much more than I usually can.
As happy as I am with my "fastest race ever in Belgium," I would have been happier with a plain old "fastest race ever," considering that was the only race I've ever run in Belgium. But hey, there are still more races before I go home and many years of running to come.