Every meet brings a variety of surprises and today's meet did not disappoint.  In some cases these surprises are good and in some cases some surprises are not-so-good.  One surprise for me today was that we only had 11 finishers after getting all 16 boys across the line at the first Roslyn meet eight days ago.  And lets face it, to try and go 1st through 7th again like last week was going to be a challenge for several reasons, most notably the runners from other schools.  Surprises aside, I typically have some hopeful predictions that I keep to myself before races and this year's squad has been delivering on these more often than not.  I typically keep these to myself because I don't want to project so many expectations onto the boys and add any undo pressure before a meet.  As long as the boys are working hard and improving, I, and Coach Turner and Coach Fitch (in addition to the boys) feel like the season is successful.  Today, I was hoping for: the first sub-14:00 STC performer ever, our top 5 to be under 15:00, someone to have a "breakout" race, everyone on the team to break 19:00, and everyone to get a personal best from 8 days ago.  And wouldn't you know it, just about all of these came to fruition.

 

Macon Moring led the way for us again as he did last Friday at FUMA.  Macon Went out hard, probably the first time I have ever seen someone on our team go out under 4:30 for the first split.  He hung in there despite being all alone and crossed the line in 13:56, the 2nd fastest time ever on the course and 12 seconds faster than any other STC runner in history (Ford ran 14:08 eight days ago).  Macon was even 9 seconds from the course record (Miles Clikeman 2010) as he became just the 3rd person in history to break the magic 14:00 barrier on that course.  Jack Parker and Ethan Smith were almost a minute behind in the 2nd and 4th slots, but Grady White and Richmond Southall were hot on their heels, breaking the 15:00 barrier after just missing it last week.  We had five of the first seven finishers in the race and all were under 15:00.  

 

Even though we had fewer finishers than anticipated, 10 of our 11 finishers had personal bests from eight days ago and all 11 finishers were well under the 19:00 mark.  In fact, 16 more seconds, and we would have had all 11 runners under 18:00!  The "breakout" race of the day (and biggest improvement) came from George Beck who dropped 1:30 from his time just over a week ago.  In the process, he also moved up 21 finish places from a week ago.  Matthew Caudill was our other big time drop as he dropped over 1:00 from eight days ago, and moved up 10 slots in the standings as well.  All in all, it was a successful meet in the sense of not only the improvement, but how the boys improved.  For the most part, many of the boys had similar opening splits to last week, but it was their pushing during the second and third loops (particularly the third) that gave them the big time drops.  A few boys who needed to be more aggressive on that first split did just that as well.  This ability to adjust and improve race plans and tactics is almost more impressive than those big time drops.

 

As we shift gears to our next meet this Saturday at Pole Green Park, things will certainly ramp up in terms of competition and atmosphere.  However, one of our goals will be to treat this race like a low-key Roslyn race and go in there, run what we are all capable of running, and let the chips fall where they may in terms of score.