Up to the halfway point, Lucy Ndungu labored along through a mob of runners and doubted herself.
"Am I able to finish it off?" she said she remembers thinking.
The 5-kilometer mark of the 10,000-meter run at the NCAA West Preliminaries is not the ideal place for hesitancy. Ndungu, a Wichita State junior from St. Louis, quickly returned to her strategy and positive thoughts.
"I realized 'This is the race and I have to stick with people. Whenever they make a move, I move with them,'" she said. "I just hang on to people.