Road races are available to the runner year around, but summer can be especially important time to do some racing. Racing can keep you motivated and give you more experience as a racer. Although this is the college athletes’ “off-season”, it is a very important training season. Just a few road races can go a long way in keeping you on course with practice and giving you feed back as to where you are. Racing is a very large part mental, not just physical, in regards to strength and experience that is needed for success. This weekend, Coach Stowers ran the Eastern Ottawa Young Life 5k. Although she has been busy with school, and not training with the team at Grace, she has been able to put in some running and was very happy with a time of 25:31.9. This gave her 42nd place out of 103 runners. She was the 13th female. Even though she doesn’t feel that she is in tip-top shape, she credits all of the years of racing experience with giving her a strong mental edge over the competition. She has found that during a race, confidence and positive shelf talk can really benefit your overall performance.