Lincoln Academy 9/19/09 - 9/26/09

Great week of XC. Everyone on the team is improving and all are bettering or staying close to their PR's each week. I thought that after Belfast it would be hard for a lot of the guys to beat their times by as much as they have. Many saw improvements at Medomak and a few saw better times this week at Lincoln on a much hillier course. Most at least stayed close to the time they got last week. Awesome!

Training:
Saturday September 19 - Long run 10.5 miles pretty hard. 5 Circuit strength workout.

Sunday September 20 - Rest day. Spent a wonderful day At Bailey's Island on the coast with Nicole!

Monday September 21 - Track day. Long but fairly speedy warm up. 3 x 1200 on the track race pace. Same cool down but slower.

Tuesday September 22 - Hard three mile on the road (1 - 2 minutes slower than race pace). 6 x 200 on the track.


Wednesday September 23 - Run at the UMA course. Did it twice. Everyone on the team but Eben and I got lost.....

Thursday September 24 - Easy day 1.5 mile easy jog and stretch. Came up with the team t-shirt.

Friday September 25 - Course run then race. 16:18 for 5k at Lincoln.

Saturday September 26 - 9.5 mile run at Orono with the boys XC team there. (Plus Ryan Widz and Kelton!)


Lincoln Academy - Coming into Lincoln I wasn't sure what to expect from the course. I knew that a lot of people ran some very good times on the course the year before despite the course having one rather large hill that you run twice. Turned out that the course is still conducive to pretty fast running. I really liked the trails. My dad and my coach had me at 16:17 but the official time was 16:18. I think I'll just go with the better time especially since you can see me after the finish line and the clock still says 16:17 (below).

The course was, however, a little short last year and an extra lap around the athletic field was added which probably tacked on 200-250 meters. This was really cool because Widzgowski actually ran a better time this year with the extra lap! I felt 10x better than at Medomak and, along with Ryan, ran a few seconds better than at Medomak last week. A few of the guys PR'ed on the team and everyone stayed close to their best times. Tom Ferguson PR'ed by about 8 seconds with a 21:53 (22:01 previous). Addison Cox ran a 24:35 (27:39 previous!) That's a 3 minute + PR. Holy Crap. Jason Goggin busted up the 25 minute barrier with his 24:36 (25:04 previous) and Shawn White almost took off two minutes hitting 25:35 (27:29 previous). A new freshman, Anthony Arbour, opened with a 22:22. There was much rejoicing and it was time for a nice sub 17 picture for Ryan (below)

Up Next week - @ Home vs. Gardiner and Skowhegan. Homecoming Meet! Gotta get a good time on our home course!

UMaine visit - After the meet was over I left for home to pack and eat because I was going to go to UMaine that night to stay with the boys XC team! Ryan and Kelton Cullenberg were going that night too so that made it wayyyy cooler. On the way up my dad thought he went by the entrance to Orono so he pulled over so he could turn around. Of course we were looking in the mirrors to see if there were cars coming behind us and what do we see? The blue lights of a cop pulling us over. Now we knew that we weren't speeding but my dad just said whatever and I tried to find the registration. About 45 seconds later the cop came up and told us that he thought our plate light was out but then after he pulled up behind us he saw that it was actually OK. Weird.

By the time we got up there it was pretty chilly. I met Ryan Harkleroad and some of the boys on the team. Everyone was really cool. We went to Tim Horton's and played Halo. They were all better than Kelton, Ryan, and I.
I was by far the worst of us three so.... yeah. The next day we ran 9 miles and ate at a place called Johnny's. The food was really nice. Kelton and I got a tour of the campus from Riley Masters and David Currier and then we both went home.