One Long Run

Today we returned from our time trial with our first long run of the season. Our top group consisted of Nick, Matt, Sully, and myself. We did an 80 run east on Ladue. Sully was a champ and left most of the complaining to Matt, who made sure we all knew how tired he was. Coach Tom paced us perfectly getting us to Reed School, our desired location, at exactly 40 minutes. We were joined on our run today by alumni and blogmaster Kabes, who was the only person besides Tom that had ever run as far as Reed School. Tom gloated about being able to push us farther and harder than Coach Rob was ever able to last year. Hopefully all these practices running with Coach Tom will pay off when we get to the races later this month.

 

Matt survived the run in case you were wondering and we ended up putting in 11 1/2 miles today. Good work boys! The new meet schedule has been published on the De Smet Cross Country website for all former alumni and De Smet supporters who want to come and cheer us on this season. Your attendance is greatly supported by the team. Speaking of alumni...the alumni run is this Saturday August 13th at 9:00 at De Smet. There will be both a 1 mile race and a 2 mile race. I'm sure the alumni will be out in full force and I'll make sure to update the blog about all the excitement of the day. After practice today, Coach met with the varsity to talk about our practice schedule for the season. Seeing how much time and effort Coach Traughber puts into maximizing the performance of his runner is always impressive and motivating for us.

 

Moving on to much more important matters, today was the annual pool party at Coach Boland's house!! It's hard to put into words how much fun we have each year so I'll try to just touch on the finner aspects of the afternoon. I arrived late after taking an ice bath and I almost missed the classic pool relay races of varsity vs. jv. Kevin, Matt, Nick Trunko (our secret recruit) and myself faced off against Patrick Callahan, Potter, Morris, and Tim Pickel. After winning the freestyle relay the j.v. took the breast stroke relay. This set up a great final with myself just beating out Patrick to take the medley relay. Wow, what a great race! After the swim races Kevin and I faced off against Sully and Michael Callahan in an epic game of washers. After being down 5-1 Kevin and I surged back to win 8-6. We celebrated with running cannonballs into the pool.

 

Finally, we decided to start a new game this year of water football. Hebda, myself, Beers, and Glenn faced off against MC, Sully, and Husmann. We got whipped 5-1...Ouch! After the game we decided to switch up the teams with a draft. MC and myself were captains and I ended up with Husmann, Hebda, and Beers, while MC took Glenn, Sully, and Nick Trunko. Wow, what a game! Tied 4-4 MC threw a touchdown pass to Sully to win the game just as time expired. M.V.Ps of the game were Glenn with 2 picks and a couple of nice catches at wide receiver and tight end Sully who was dangerous in the red zone with a couple of touchdown grabs. Overall, it was a great day and we had lots of fun.