It was a decently cool day to race out at Collegiate, and even though it was windy at times, it wasn't too gusty for most of our race.  This marked the beginning of 3 races in 6 days for many of our boys as many will run at the state meet on Saturday, and everyone will be in action at the SPAM race this coming Tuesday.

 

Our main goal coming in was to improve upon our 5k time from FUMA just 19 days prior.  We did a great job with that goal as 5 of our 10 runners dropped time, along with 2 of our veterans earning big PRs after missing the FUMA meet earlier this season.  LB broke 22:00 for the first time, dropping 22 seconds from FUMA.  James was close to breaking 22:00 as well at 22:01, a 31-second drop.  Hudson almost broke 23:00 at 23:01, dropping 7 seconds from FUMA.  Tate dropped 21 seconds from FUMA and Wickham led the improvement train this meet with a 1:24 improvement.  Ely and Teddy had ridiculous time drops from this race a year ago with Ely dropping 7:42 and Teddy dropping 11:17.  Both ended last season with personal bests at the JV Prep League race at St. Catherine's, just over the 30:00 mark, so each of them dropped around 5:00 from their PR as well.  Given Teddy's limited running over the past week along with missing the FUMA 5k earlier this season, this was an impressive run.  Ely's improvement was also impressive given that he has not raced since the Collegiate Relay meet one month ago and also had several weeks off from running in that timeframe.  Davis was only 26 seconds off his time from FUMA, but was instructed to run a bit controlled today to save up for Saturday's state meet.  Given that he won by 50 seconds and was still about 20 seconds ahead of last year, it was certainly "mission accomplished" up front for him.

 

Davis is now undefeated on the season for 5ks after also winning the FUMA 5k earlier this season.  Behind Davis, we had 2 other runners earn a top-25 ribbon as LB and James were both in the top 15 at 14th and 15th, respectively.  Hudson just missed out on the awards in 27th place.  With Veritas and Hunter absent today, Powhatan not entering their stronger runners that beat us pretty handily at FUMA, and us getting close to Collegiate last meet, I thought we had an outside shot to win today or maybe even just beat out St. Bridget for the first time this season.  Neither of those happened, but as always, the improvement for the boys was the number one goal and there was plenty of that.  We actually tied St. Bridget through 4 runners from each team, but their #5 man was much stronger.  We did beat 7 other schools in addition to 3 incomplete teams, so overall, it was a pretty solid finish for us.