Tuesday was certainly a great day to open the season with decent weather right around 80 and low humidity.  I am sure the boys would have gladly taken cooler weather, but given that we have spent about half our season indoors due to high heat, this was certainly welcome weather.

 

Anyway you slice it, this first meet was overflowing with positives.  The coaches were very impressed with what we saw out there from everyone and I really think this first meet set a great tone for the season and meets to come.

 

The mental side of distance running can be a great ally and spending time during Monday's practice to go over the course, figure out a goal time about 1:30-2:00 faster than the Roslyn time last week, and thinking about the splits to achieve that goal, made the boys that much more prepared for this first meet.  Knowing those splits beforehand helps a boy react when they hear the halfway split, speeding up if they realize they were too slow or fighting harder to stay on pace if that first split is close to the goal.  Our top 6 all ran pretty even for those splits, with James, Gray, and Asher all running slightly faster on the second half.  Paul, Lawson, and Crosby went out more conservatively, giving them the need to push a lot more on the second half of the race.  They did just that with Paul going 56 seconds faster in loop two, Lawson 24 seconds faster, and Crosby 15 seconds faster (close to Gray's 11 seconds faster 2nd split).  This shows a great reaction from this trio and also the grit from our top 6 to try and keep that second split close to the first one.

 

You know it is a good day when the "worst" improvement from Roslyn was 1:29.  Paul was over 4:00 faster this meet than at Roslyn, Tate almost 3:30 faster, and Asher and Lawson each about 2:45-2:50 faster than their Roslyn time last week.  The other fact that blew me away from this meet was that everyone's mile pace, not overall time, but mile pace was at least 1:00 faster, ranging from 1:00 to 2:46 faster!  Our 5 veterans all ran faster by about 30 seconds to about 1:30 when compared to last year's race on this course.  It is great to see them all starting ahead of where they were a year ago.  Henry Kidd added an extra layer of excitement to his debut race, improving by over 2:00 from last week, averaging under 6:00 mile pace, and becoming just the 6th STC runner to have ever broken 9:00 on this course.  Asher had a great run in his debut, dropping almost 3:00 from last week's Roslyn race and averaging just under 7:00 mile pace for his race.  He certainly closed the gap between our #5 man and our #4 man, making a big difference in the team finish place.  

 

Although the score is not our main concern, this was also a strong spot for us at this meet.  We put our top 5 in the top 23 and ended up in a close battle for 2nd as we held off Collegiate (who was missing one of their runners) by 4 points and Lourdes by 14 points.  Veritas was just too strong, but again, finish place is not one of our main focuses (except for the SPAM race).  Speaking of SPAM, it already looks like it is going to be another tight year in our annual SPAM dual meet with Collegiate.  As our veterans may remember, we typically outwork/outtrain many of the teams we saw today, including Collegiate, so we hope to replicate that and give ourselves a shot to win SPAM once again!  I hope this meet gives every boy a renewed sense of validation that we are improving ourselves everyday and we should look forward to getting the most out of practices each day (and weekend runs) so we are prepared to keep things moving in a positive direction at future meets.