2016 Landon Invitational

Considering the number of options teams have to choose from on this last weekend of September, the Landon Invitational put on a very competitive meet Saturday. After losing some teams to other meets the past two years, Landon saw one of it's largest fields ever.

Landon's course is deceptively difficult. Though at a glance it looks like it could be a fast course, there are few flat areas. While new athletes may set personal bests at this course due to their rapid improvement from their early-career times, more experienced runners typically will not set PRs on this course.

Though I was hoping for a better team performance, I'm content with the individual performances I saw on Saturday... for now. We still have a lot of work to do as we head into the last several weeks of the season. That's right, the season is already in its latter stages. We are five weeks away from our conference championship meet and seven weeks away from the Private School State Championship.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the JV race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

55 Manuel Legaspi (So.) - 22:47 [(1) 6:54, (2) 7:20, (3.1) 8:33]

84 Brandon Turpin (Fr.) - 24:15 [(1) 7:14, (2) 8:01, (3.1) 9:00]

125 Andrew Byrd (Sr.) - 26:25 [(1) 7:55, (2) 8:43, (3.1) 9:47]

132 Caleb Ghatt (Fr.) - 27:10 [(1) 8:05, (2) 8:43, (3.1) 10:22]

Manuel was unable to finish last week's race as he came into the mile marker with a minor ankle injury and decided to play it safe. He had a great week of practice. His last race was three weeks ago at Brunswick, which was a 3 mile course. Even with the extra distance, Manuel bettered his time by nearly 1 minute and 40 seconds.

Brandon had a good workout on Wednesday but his lower leg injury still has not cleared up. He ran a steady last two miles but I know he is capable of much more if we can get him healthy. Andrew ran a very smart race. He backed off the first mile a bit which allowed him to run the second two miles at a very similar pace as his second two miles last week at Covenant Life.

Caleb, meanwhile, ran nearly the same time as last week in his first mile but did not fall of his pace the same way he has been. As a result, he ran 2 minutes and 24 seconds faster than he did just a week ago. Great job, Caleb!

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the varsity race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

4 Devin Smith (Fr.) - 17:59 [(1) 5:31, (2) 5:54, (3.1) 6:34]

14 Matthew Metz (Jr.) - 18:39 [(1) 5:54, (2) 6:10, (3.1) 6:35]

27 John Ahalt (Jr.) - 19:12 [(1) 5:54, (2) 6:17, (3.1) 7:01]

28 Jacob Keppler (Sr.) - 19:17 [(1) 5:54, (2) 6:17, (3.1) 7:06]

59 Ashby Ervin (So.) - 20:31 [(1) 6:20, (2) 6:58, (3.1) 7:13]

60 Thomas Parsons (Fr.) - 20:35 [(1) 6:26, (2) 6:54, (3.1) 7:15]

70 Dominic Ximinies (Fr.) - 21:06 [(1) 6:14, (2) 6:58, (3.1) 7:54]

Devin wanted to break 18 minutes in his first high school race. He had to wait an extra week, but he did so on a slightly more difficult course than he ran last week thanks to a much smarter strategy. He let the top runners set the pace and found his own rhythm a few spots back which gave him the energy to finish out the race much stronger than he did at Covenant Life. Sub-18 minutes is a huge accomplishment, Devin. Now the goal becomes to say goodbye to the 18s forever.

Matthew continues to learn how to run his race. He cut only a second off his time from Covenant Life, but he ran the final 1.1 miles 50 seconds faster than he did last week. John didn't run all that much slower in his first mile than he did last week; there was only a 12-second difference for him. Whether those 12 seconds made that much difference or he just felt stronger, he did a much better job of maintaining his rhythm throughout the race. He ran 43 seconds faster in the final third of his race than he did last week.

Jacob has been up with Matthew in the last two races. He told me after the race he wasn't feeling 100% after dealing with a cold during the week. He did a great job of staying with John through the first two miles, giving him someone to work with. Way to push through, Jacob!

Ashby and Thomas may have over-relaxed in their second mile at Landon as they ran their final 1.1 mile at around a 6:34 pace. I will be interested to talk to them this week to get their thoughts on the race, specifically the middle part of it.

After loosing almost two full weeks to a knee injury, Dominic returned with a solid performance. At Brunswick, Dominic paced our JV squad with a 20:27 performance. He ran a nearly identical second mile to that race, but after running 800m repeats on Wednesday he may have gone out a little too hard on Saturday. Being able to make that adjustment will come with experience. Overall, he ran the race at Landon at nearly the exact same pace as he ran the 3-mile course at Brunswick.

Team Results

1. The Heights 58 points

2. St. John's 67 points

3. Landon 88 points

4. Bullis 95 points

5. DeMatha 130 points

6. Washington Latin 131 points

7. St. Mary's Ryken 158 points

8. C.H. Flowers 195 points

9. Bishop Ireton 216 points

We beat two of our WCAC rivals in St. Mary's Ryken and Bishop Ireton. Four other teams finished behind Ireton, but I'm concerned only with our WCAC competitors. Personally, I'm not too worried about Ryken or Ireton. We are a better team than our score at this meet reflects, so I don't think we are in any danger of going backwards. However, as the point totals suggest we have quite a lot of work to do to compete with St. John's before we can even think about challenging teams like Gonzaga or Good Counsel. St. John's put five runners across the line before John and Jacob finished, so they are a very strong team. Of those five, two are sophomores and three are juniors, so they aren't going anywhere.

When I spoke to him Friday, Josh Gatti sounded pretty confident he would be ready to run with us again this week. I am anticipating he will be out of shape, but I know he is a hard worker and will get up to speed as quickly as he can. Ashby, Thomas, and Dominic are still inexperienced and we have a few injured guys who could still be solid contributors down the stretch if they can get healthy.

We're dealing with a lot of "ifs" here, more than I like. But one thing I know is that these guys have been working their tails off so far and their work ethics have only gotten better as the season as progressed, so I have a lot of confidence in where we are headed.

"It never gets easier, you just get stronger." - Unknown