In our third and final 5k of the season, no one missed out on running a personal best.  We did face our first big test of adversity today as our #3 and #7 runners from last Wednesday, Jamie and Christopher, were not able to run due to injury.  The rest of the boys responded beautifully.  I could tell they were pushing themselves just a little bit more due to the absence of those runners.  Coach Lecky was also in attendance to watch our runners cross the finish line.  Thanks to this extra effort, along with our training to peak for this flat, fast course, we had nine of our 16 runners drop over 1:00 from their best 5k time this season (either FUMA on 10/1 or St. Catherine's on 10/19).

 

The Big Three flexed their muscle from the start, controlling the race by being the only three guys to hit the first mile under 6:00.  They continued that dominance all the way to the end as all three broke the 20:00 barrier again this season.  Aubrey led the way with the win in 19:04, which I believe is the fastest time a St. Chris middle schooler has ever run on this course (6 seconds ahead of Jack Smith's time from last year).  Knight came in second, dropping 22 seconds from last week.  Christian was fourth, dropping nine seconds off his FUMA time and about 2:30 from his time a week ago.  A great comeback race for him.  Weston really stepped up his game with Jamie out and dropped over 1:00 from his FUMA time, coming across the line in 6th place.  Oliver rounded out the Saints' scoring in 15th place, shortly followed in 16th and 17th by Topher and George, respectively.  This marked the first meet we had someone new in our top five.  Oliver dropped close to a minute with a 47-second drop from last week, but more importantly to him, had an average mile pace just under 7:00 for the race.  George and Topher kept things close as George dropped over 2:00 from last week and Topher dropped close to 3:00 from the FUMA meet.

 

The improvement continued down the line as Matthew dropped 1:05, Hugh 1:22, Mason 1:36, Cooper 2:16, Sterling 3:29, and Mac 6:16, each from their best 5ks this season.  After adding about 1:20 last week, Scott was able to come back down close to two minutes and beat his FUMA time by 29 seconds.  And Tee, despite not running for over a week due to injury, was also able to drop from his FUMA time.  After missing our first two 5ks, I was excited that Jake got in his first time of the year for this distance, and wouldn't you know it, he hit my exact time goal for him today!  This gave us a perfect 16 for 16 for personal bests today.  On top of that, we also went a perfect 16 for 16 in terms of having everyone's mile pace under 10:00.

 

Watching Weston step up his game, Sterling run aggressive to destroy his goal time, seeing Mac going under 30:00, and watching Aubrey run away from the field to almost break 19:00 were just some of pleasant surprises today, and this year was full of those every week.  It makes me look forward to next week for Monday's final mile time trial and also the 2-mile SPAM race on Wednesday.  On the flip side, I will be sad to see the season end as I want to see the boys continue to improve and dominate.  This victory moved us to a perfect 56-0 with one remaining meet.