Ready to Rock

Hey guys, welcome back! Its been a long and busy week for me so this is my first opportunity to blog this week. Our biggest new this week is that Austin Del Roso has decided to play soccer and run cross country. He's one of our best runners, if not our best runner so we are all very excited about his decision. Tuesday was the two mile time trial to decide which ten guys get to run varsity in our first meet next Wednesday. Austin won the race with an outstanding time of 10:34. Austin was followed by Matt (10:38), myself (10:39), and Nick (10:42.) Other varsity qualifiers include Sully, MC, Trunko, Husmann, Glenn, and possibly Potter. Anyway, it was about 96 degrees when we ran so I thought it was impressive performance for us.

Last Saturday was the annual pancake breakfast at Coach's house. Liz made some great pancakes including numbers with our individual places on the team, how clever! The lightning that day forced us to run sprints down the sidewalk covered strip mall in front of the Big River Running Store. It was quite an interesting run, and was my first practice ever in four years that was affected by lightning.

Today we headed over to the dreaded Conway Park for four miles of continuous tempos, with a 30 second break in between the second and third miles. Our group of Nick, Matt, Austin, and myself ran amazingly. I'm so proud of those guys. We worked really well together motivating each other through the hard workout. In the last mile, when Matt started to slow down, we showered him with encouragement to stay with us all the way to the finish. We ran 11:55 for  the first two miles and 11:40 for the second two. MC and Sully weren't far behind at 12:12 and 12:09. With that said, I'm pumped for our first meet this Wednesday at 4:45 at Fenton Park in the Nike Kickoff Two Mile Classic. I think we're going to kick some butt.

Before leaving for college, Jacob, Kevin, and Potter (HOF class of 2011) met with myself, Glenn, and Nick about blogging for the upcoming year. Although unfortunately I will not be posting everyday, I assure you readers that the blog is in capable hands and that we will continue through the cross country season. Stay tuned for posts from Glenn and Nick possibly. The alumni and my former teammates parted for college with firm handshakes and they gave us a digital camera for our blog this year. They will be missed for all their hard work on and off the cross country course!

Stay tuned for post meet updates and thanks for reading.