After a gloomy and damp morning, the weather cleared out nicely just as the race got underway this afternoon.  The clouds broke up to help lower the humidity and the sun even came out for most of the race.  Although Veritas clearly did not read the communication about the meet being a JV/MS meet, their Varsity runners did prove helpful in pushing our red team.  I appreciate all the parent/family support the boys have been getting these first few meets.  It was also nice to see Mr. Cross out there.  His oldest son Philip was one of the best runners we have ever had and essentially the first "really fast" runner I coached at STC back in 2009 & 2010.  That 2010 team, which had 2 5:30 guys and 2 5:50s guys in the mile time trial, would have done very well had they had a crack at this relay race meet (which began in 2015).

 

Based on historical data, the race should unfold with the boys trying to run close to their first mile time trial time (or better) on the first loop.  I was a little worried about that today with all the rain as that loop is mostly on soft fields, but the course tour on that section before the race showed that it was surprisingly a bit more solid than I was suspecting.  The goal on the second loop, which seems to be the longest based on years of data, is to be within 25 seconds of their first loop.  Most runners did a great job hitting these marks on loops 1 and 2.  For the third loop, the fatigue starts to set in, but given that it is the last loop, the goal is to beat or equal their second loop split.  Other than Teddy Sterrett, no one was able to pull this off.  I am not sure if the turnaround location was off previous years, the lack of cool down and other related prep between each of the first two loops may have also been a contributing factor, not to mention lack of weekend running.  One other goal was to get to see most of the 5k course that we will run in just under a month.  All but the 1 mile to the 1.5 mile of that course was seen today, albeit in some cases it was the different direction from the 5k.

 

Due to the rest between miles and the fact that this race is like no other race we have done or will do, it is hard to compare other races to this one to gauge improvement.  Our veterans do have some numbers from last year, which was great to see so many drops.  Charlie Branch had the best average drop of 36 seconds with Henry Peace not far behind at 33 seconds of dropped time per mile.  McCoy Eakin was right behind them with a 29-second improvement on his mile pace from last year.  McCoy had the biggest loop drop of anyone at 49 seconds, Charlie at 45 seconds, Henry at 44 seconds, and Avery Berents at 23 seconds.  It was great to see our veterans make so much improvement.  On the first loop, Avery, Henry, Charlie, and Brennan Regan all beat their mile time trial time from the first week of school, with most of the rest of the team just over that mile time trial time, so execution of that loop was pretty good across the board.  On the second loop, 5 runners kept their split within 25 seconds per the usual result of that split.  As mentioned above, the third loop was a bit rough this year with only Teddy running a faster third loop than second loop.  Historically, Charlie ran an average split that equaled the average of the 2nd fastest split average (Asher Green), just 2 seconds behind LT Nguyen's average from 2022.  Davis Mullen ranks 10th best ever in this meet with his 6:07 mile average.

 

As a team, we did very well.  The red team was ahead of Veritas' senior/junior B team until the end, trailing that B team by about 90 seconds after all was said and done.  So, even though they weren't supposed to be there, they did help our red squad feel like they had more competition for most of the race.  We were about 6:30 ahead of the actual MS/JV 2nd place team, so any extra push for our red team was important.  The red team of Avery, Davis, Charlie, and Henry ran to the 3rd best time in meet history (all top 5 are St. Chris teams), just 17 seconds behind the 2nd best team (STC 2016) in meet history.  The B team had a nice 6th place finish, but fell just short of breaking that 90-minute barrier.  They ran 1:31.22, so just over 80 seconds from getting under that magic number of 90 minutes.  We do only count A teams for each school for our season record, which still remains undefeated at 23-0.  That will be tested though next weekend at FUMA as we will see a lot of new teams (public and private) from the Charlottesville area.