Although a half mile shorter than the MileStat 4k at Pole Green on 10/15, the hillier nature of Bandy provides a good comparison between the two.  Of the 17 people that ran in both of these races, 12 ran a faster mile pace today, while only 5 added (4 of those added 5 seconds or less per mile, so not much at all).  Harvie Wilkinson ran a mile pace 36 seconds faster than his MileStat mile pace while Alex Charvat was 30 seconds per mile faster.  Five more had double-digit drops in their mile pace from 10/15 to today, including: Brodie Schlobohm (-19), Sidney Hetherington (-18), Liam Dunn (-14), Mac McClendon (-13), and Stanton Czajkowski (-12).  The other stat I was excited about was the accuracy of the time predictions.  We had 6 of our 21 runners within 6 seconds of their actual time: Mitchell Gallagher 1 second, Mac McClendon & Mac Aronhalt 2 seconds each, Noah Smith 3 seconds, and Stephens Rabb & Stanton Czajkowski 6 seconds each.  In fact, 16 of our 21 runners were within 31 seconds of their actual time.  As someone who typically tries to calculate paces for the boys before every race, I kept my opinions to myself for these predictions and the boys proved they have not only improved themselves physically this year, but also mentally.  Clearly most of the team has a good pulse on their ability to complete a race spanning multiple miles.

 

LT Nguyen led the way for the Saints, once again running virtually all alone en route to the second fastest time ever run in meet history.  His winning time of 11:10 was just 8 seconds off of Asher Green's record set a year ago.  Mitchell Gallagher also had an impressive race, tying the 3rd best time ever run on the course.  Collegiate also had a pair of runners in the top 7 ever, making an impressive overall race on the boys side.  Going into the meet, I was interested to see how not having two of our typical top 6 runners would play out in a dual meet with Collegiate (they were missing their #3 man too).  I thought it would be closer than it actually was, showing that the boys really stepped up to make up for our 3 missing STC runners today.  Taking 14 of the first 20 slots, the sea of red (and now a little white too) at SPAM was a great way to break in our brand new jerseys!  The 22-37 victory today gave us our 9th straight SPAM title, which is good because we don't want the smaller runner-up trophy hanging out in my classroom for the next year.  Looking ahead even further to next year, removing all of our 8s and all of Collegiate's 9th graders, we technically would win 28-30 with our current 7s versus their current 8s.  They actually don't have 5 non-9th graders on their team, but a lot can happen in the next year.