I don't really want to think of these next four days as an end.  Put that way, it seems like a negative thing.  Every meet is a clean slate, and with that in mind, this is a begininning.  I'm not quite sure what it's a beginning of, but every season I leave my championship meet with a new goal in mind. 

As a writer, I may say that the story of my racing goes like so:
Chapter one: The season, right up until the afternoon before I race
Chapter two: The championship meet
Chapter three: The doors my championship meet has opened for the next season.
Chapter four: The next season, right up until the afternoon before I race

It's a cycle, and that's really the reason that I can't quit.  Breaking the cycle isn't possible just yet.  My last championship meet went terribly, and because of that, I had no goals, so my cycle was thrown off.  Yet it was still there, because I had merely stretched the previous cycle a few months longer.

In retrospect, that may be better for this meet because I know that I have even more to drop.