Yesterday was a great day for a track meet with good weather and the relay-only setup is always a lot of fun.  Some runners find themselves in events they don't normally run, usually a distance or mid-distance guy dropping down to run a 100 or 200.  And, as much as a track team can sometimes feel like an individual sport, yesterday was the perfect opportunity to reiterate the team atmosphere of track.  Knowing that others are depending on you gives you that little extra push, and there were plenty of those moments yesterday.  We begin the day with several changes to account for an absent teammate, thrusting Jack Bodt and Whit Monette into an extra relay, RJ Johnson hobbled through his anchor leg of the 4x200 to help his team to a 2nd place finish, Arjun Anand subbed in the 4x4 for a teammate who got sick during the meet, several boys ran back-to-back events, Liam Dunn ran through some knee pain, and along with Langdon Sexton, pushed themselves in the 4x8, not too long after their DMR, to help that 4x8 team break the meet record.  It truly was a team effort yesterday.  In terms of running the meet, it was also a team effort with Coach Dunn as the starter, Coach Cross as the clerk, Coach Fitch in the booth entering results, Coach Hornik helping get splits, and Mason and Chris' moms helping me out with timing and finish order.  Thank you to everyone who pitched in.

 

In terms of personal bests, this meet is a little harder to log personal bests.  As relay teams, we had 7 of our 17 relay teams beat their seed time, but that is by no means the mark of a personal best or not.  Individually, we cannot count splits for 100s or 200s due to the running start and inconsistency of where handoffs occur in the zones, so that knocks out about half of the legs run in the various relays.  For 400 and up, we did have our fair share of personal bests, including a NEPR as Langdon Sexton ran his first 1200 ever to lead off the DMR.  Asa led off the A team with a 36.5 second PR in the 1200, the only person on the team with a 1200 PR before today as he ran on the C DMR last year in this meet.  In the 800 legs of the sprint medley, Mac McClendon had a big PR by 4.5 seconds, now just about 3 seconds from the elite performance time in the 800.  Jack Bodt almost broke 3:00 for the first time, but did drop a few more seconds, which is extra impressive on the heels of his 10k over the weekend.  We had 3 other 800 PRs in the 4x800 relay with Thomas Starke dropping 6 seconds and Langdon Sexton and Charlie Branch both on the cusp of breaking 2:30.  In the various 400s throughout the day, we had 4 personal bests, and a lot of close calls.  Aedan Imbert lowered his sub-1:00 400 PR to 59.55, moving him up to 28th on the all-time list.  In the 4x400 relays, Dax Alexander shaved a bit of time and Mac McClendon capped off his awesome meet with another second drop in his 400 to 1:02, now just a few seconds from an elite performance in that event.  Alexander Koussoglou had a monster final leg of the B 4x4 team, dropping 6 seconds.  His time of 1:03.12 ranks him 17th all-time among STC 7th grade 400 runners, with more of the season to try and move up that list.

 

Speaking of all-time lists, we have already partially mentioned the 4x800 team of Asa White, Liam Dunn, Charlie Branch, and Langdon Sexton breaking the meet record in the 4x8, just a few seconds from an elite performance and likely the 18th fastest 4x8 ever run by STC middle school.  There were two other historical relay performances yesterday with the sprint medley team (200 - Mason Joyce, 200 - Tristan Litzenburg, 400 - RJ Johnson, and 800 - Mac McClendon) hitting the elite performance mark by just over 4 seconds.  They now rank 5th on the all-time list in that event.  The super sprint medley (100, 100, 200, 400) is a relatively new event for us, but we did have yesterday's squad of Alexander Koussoglou, Brendan Cosby, RJ Johnson, and Aedan Imbert hit the elite performance time by over 4 seconds, logging the third best time in STC MS history, earning a spot on the record board in my classroom.  This is the first update to the board this season, so congratulations to that quartet.

 

The A team ended up winning 4 of the 7 relays, while coming in 2nd place in the other 3 relays.  We were certainly close to winning the 4x4 and the 4x2, and although some personnel shifts and injuries may have changed the results in two of those relays, that is nothing to dwell on.  We did our best at that time and props to Franklin Military (4x2), Fredericksburg Christian (4x4), and St. Mary's (SMR) for winning those three events.  Our depth was also a big contributor to our win with our B team scoring well in all events.  Our B teams had 2 3rds, 3 4ths, 1 6th, and 1 7th, meaning all of our A and B teams scored (top 8).  We also had a 6th, 8th, and 9th from the 3 relays we had C teams, but only two teams per school were allowed to score in each event.  We started this meet in 2017 and despite a few years of no meet due to Covid, we have won all 6 meets and this year's squad accumulated the 3rd most points of our 6 winning squads.

 

In terms of what we can work on moving forward, most of it has nothing to do with the running per se.  Our team area was left a mess from equipment, clothing, and trash.  The warming up and cooling down was also an issue and was something that I have noticed in previous meets.  Some boys are starting to deal with some various pains and much of this is related to lack of warming and/or cooling down.  If you did not get yourself into a good sweat before your race, you did not warm up enough yesterday.  Plus, with the cooler temperatures, the chance for injury increases.