Ms. Lane opened up her season with a nice win at a small local meet. Of course it's going to be claimed she did a tempo workout and didn't really race it, but that's been said so many times in the past despite her never ever not going 100% or exceptionally close to it.
She ran 17:59 on a course that is about 20-60 seconds slower than a recent invite in the area, the Coolbreeze Invitational, where the top girls were in the 16:30s.
You could see before last track season began she was not dealing with the same body as before. She looks a lot healthier now, but healthy ain't necessarily fast is it?
Hopefully she can adjust to being a sub-elite at the HS level but the expectations she has on herself will likely kill her love for this sport. She's never going to run as fast as she did in the past. Not even closed. I can't imagine what that's like as a high school girl in this social media driven world. I hope she sticks with it and learns to love the sport even if it doesn't bring her the same sort of attention and success. It's going to be very difficult for her to qualify for NXN or FL, but that sort of adversity will be good for her long term.