2019 College Park parkrun #1

Our first race of the season is in the books and I'm very happy that nearly everybody on the team showed up today.

I'll be brief with the recap this week. As I told you today, not everybody hit their goal time. I'm not going to quibble over seconds, so if you were close to your goal time you'll still see an asterisk (*) next to your name signifying that you have hit your qualifying time and will be entered in meets going forward.

Those of you who did not hit your time and weren't close enough for me to give you a pass on it, know that you are not far off. I fully expect, based on today's performances, that everybody will meet their qualifying standard before WCACs if you continue to display the work ethic I have seen so far this season. Use it also as a reminder of just how important it is to take your summer training seriously, whether you can make it out to the group runs or have to train on your own.

Everybody who did not meet their goal is expected to continue to train. On Saturdays, you should either be attending meets with the team (it builds your relationships with your teammates and, especially for the newcomers, will give you a taste of what real high school cross country meets feel and look like) or finding a 5k in order to try again to meet your qualifying standard. These park runs are held every Saturday at 9am and there are a few others in the area besides the College Park one if you want to see if there is one closer to where you live. Just be sure to let me know if you are going to do the latter on a particular Saturday rather than attending a meet with the team.

On to your results. No mile splits this week but we'll get those back beginning next week.

Open Race

Here are the results for all of our athletes (191 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the parkrun and an asterisk (*) after the time signifies they have met their qualifying standard to be entered in meets going forward. In brackets is their average mile pace:

4 Jayden Keels (Fr.) - 19:12* [6:11]

5 James Hudson (Jr.) - 19:22* [6:14]

6 Thomas Parsons (Sr.) - 19:32* [6:17]

9 Hayward Smith-Cassidy (Sr.) - 20:42* [6:40]

10 Ian Parsons (Fr.) - 20:51* [6:43]

13 Tariq Lewis (So.) - 21:09* [6:48] PR by 10 seconds

14 Jaiden Mosley (Jr.) - 21:11* [6:49]

17 Julius Gamble (Jr.) - 21:29* [6:55] PR by 46 seconds

21 Gavin Foran (Jr.) - 22:01* [7:05]

22 Desmond Holt (So.) - 22:20* [7:11]

24 Sam Cockrell (Fr.) - 22:24* [7:13]

25 Mathias Roy (Sr.) - 22:29* [7:14]

26 Ronald Rucker (So.) - 22:31* [7:15]

30 Michael Metz (Fr.) - 23:08* [7:27]

32 London Bailey (Sr.) - 23:31 [7:34]

33 Jonah Lyke (Fr.) - 23:33* [7:35]

34 Michael Duarte (Fr.) - 23:36* [7:36]

37 Christopher Toomer (Fr.) - 23:42* [7:38]

39 Steven Camarano (Jr.) - 23:59 [7:43]

43 Jaden Davis (Fr.) - 24:48* [7:59]

48 Lucas Arzayus (Sr.) - 25:25 [8:11]

59 Caleb Ghatt (Sr.) - 26:52 [8:39]

66 Cameron Polk (Jr.) - 27:58 [9:00]

79 Jacob Robertson (So.) - 29:10 [9:23]

80 Yaphet Negussie (Fr.) - 29:12* [9:24]

81 Andrew Foreman (Fr.) - 29:26* [9:28]

83 Bodior Elliott (Sr.) - 29:37 [9:32]

88 Georges Tadonki (Fr.) - 30:50 [9:55]

96 Maximo Legaspi (Fr.) - 31:52 [10:15]

102 Jaquada Moses (Fr.) - 32:29 [10:27]

110 Ian Brown (So.) - 33:24 [10:45]

Of note: James Hudson was only 9 seconds off his PR and Ronald Rucker was just 3 seconds off his!

Final Note: Next week we race at the Woodward Relays and I have begin looking at entries. I will have meet information, including who is running what, up on the website as soon as I can and will share the link via Remind.

One important detail: Everybody will race! Looking at the meet registration site, I see that I am only required to submit athletes for the relay portion of the meet. The open race, it appears, leaves it up to coaches to get hand times. As such, those of you who did not meet your qualifying standard will get to run next week. You will not receive a uniform yet, but can race in your DeMatha cross country t-shirts (or your DeMatha House shirt if you do not have the XC shirt). This will give you another opportunity to hit your qualifying time while also being with the rest of the team.

This will be a 3-mile course rather than a 5k, so normally I would convert your 5k qualifying standard to a 3-mile standard (i.e. a newcomer who has to hit 30 minutes for his 5k would be expected to hit 28:54 in the 3 mile if I were to do the conversion). However, due to the difficulty this particular course poses, especially in comparison to other courses we will compete on this year, I will not do this and so your qualifying standard will remain the same.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend! Monday is a long run on your own. If you ran faster than 24 minutes today, you should match your longest run of the summer/fall so far or run 45 minutes, whichever is longer. Everybody else should be aiming to hit about 40 minutes on their run with a minimum of 35 minutes.

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." - Colin Powell