Erskine Academy 9/27/09 - 10/03/09

I am so late with this blog! I apologize for my extreme lateness. I forgot to do it the weekend after the race and by the time I remembered I just decided I would save it for this weekend. The week of our home meet went very well. We measured our course several times (and I obsessed over every little detail of the course). By this point the guys were so much stronger. Their hard work and Minzy's training was ready to show. It was our home meet week and we were ready to run some good times.

Training:
Sunday September 27 - Easy mid distance run in the rain and the dark!

Monday September 28 - Track work. 4 x 1200 on the track with good warm up run and cool down run.

Tuesday September 29 - More track work. 4 x 1 mile.

Wednesday September 30 - Course preparation. Ran the course twice and marked it up. Strength workout.

Thursday October 1 - Easy day with team. Warm up + capture the flag.

Friday October 2 - HOME MEET! Ended up being an awesome race for everyone and wasn't as cold as I had thought.

Saturday October 3 - Easy mid distance.

Home Meet - First off I have to say that we had the best food at our home meet that anyone has ever had at any race anywhere. There was healthy food for people who actually eat that stuff and tons of desserts for normal people.
Our meet ended up growing a little bit from its original size. There were only supposed to be three teams there: Skowhegan, Gardiner and Erskine. MCI and Messalonskee ended up showing up though which was cool. It was definitely better having a 5 team meet than only a 3 team meet. The start felt like a legit start with enough people on the line. Mr Stout, our athletic director, yelled "go" and we were off (below).

I wanted to set a pretty good time on our home course. Its flat for the first and last mile so I told myself I was going to try to push the hills during mile 2 hard. I went out in the first mile, with one small hill, in 5:05. I ran through the second mile which had two very respectable hills (one is like 1/4 mile long) in 10:26 and closed on the flat again to finish in 16:18. I am pretty happy with that time, it was a little more than 40 seconds off last years time there and it was close to my PR. Then Eben came in with a PR and then...... EVERYONE ELSE ON MY TEAM PR'ed..... whoa!

I learned after the race that Jarrod Lenfest (our 3rd) had an incredible race and in doing so pulled all the guys behind him. I have to give credit to him because I know Spencer was pacing off him and everyone else was pacing off Spencer. If he hadn't run so well all those guys wouldn't have run as well. Eben hit 17:31 (17:41 previous), Jarrod ran 18:53 (first time under 19:00!!!) (19:06 previous), Spencer cruised to a 19:48 for his first XC sub 20:00 (20:34 previous) and he dragged in Aaron Bengtson in 20:08 (20:49 previous), Jason Grotton in 20:21 (20:45 previous) and Logan Merrithew also at 20:21 (20:44 previous). From there the guys continued to smash times. Anthony Arbour ran 21:13 (22:22 previous) in only his second HS XC race ever and Tom Ferguson (21:53 previous) also PR'ed with the same time of 21:13 just behind Anthony. Kevin Graham opened up his first race of the season with a 23:00 , Ryan Wood came in with a 23:33 (23:56 previous), Addison Cox broke 24 with his 23:50 (24:35 previous) and Jason Goggin came SO CLOSE to getting 24 with his 24:03 (24:36 previous).

Everyone improved consistently and the meet was so fun!

Next week @ Mt. Blue vs. a ton of teams. Good luck everyone! (yes I know it already happened)