2019 Woodward Relays

The last time we ran at the Woodward Relays was two years ago. It was the afternoon of Back-to-School Night and it was a scorcher. The girls got some cloud cover partway through their race and then the open race had to be terminated after most of our athletes had reached the mile mark due to lightening.

Today was a very nice day, though still a bit warm, and our relay runners took advantage of the ice water sponges provided by Georgetown Prep in the exchange zone. We also had no issues getting the full open race in. Our results, including splits, are below, beginning with the relay.

Unfortunately, due to an issue with the barcode tags our anchor legs had to wear for the relay race (the correct tags were not included in our race packet), my attention was split early in the race and I missed every single one of our lead legs' first mile splits by various amounts and had no way to estimate by how much I had missed them. Thankfully Coach Mike, my mom, Nathaniel Ager, and James Carroll were able to assist in taking care of the relay tag situation so that I could turn my focus back to obtaining splits. But that does mean I don't have accurate first mile splits for any of our 12 relay runners. As such, I have included each team's 2-mile split below, followed by each athlete's 2nd and 3rd splits.

Boys Relay

First, here are the results for the relay teams. I will show individual splits below. Each team is identified by the color of the baton they were carrying. The number inside the brackets is the 2-mile split for each team (the split after each athlete on the team had run one of their three loops):

34 Red - 37:50.1 [12:11]

45 Gold - 38:49.4 [12:39]

56 Blue - 40:12.2 [12:22]

58 Black - 40:38.7 [12:59]

59 Green - 41:00.6 [12:56]

64 Silver - 42:58.8 [13:19]

Splits

As I mentioned above, I only have the second and third mile splits for each of our 12 relay athletes. Feel free to try and estimate how much of your team's 2-mile split is yours, but this was meant to be treated as a workout, so your second and third mile splits are the most important to have as we try to gauge your fitness and your feel for how to run this workout.

Thomas Parsons (Sr.) [(2) 6:23, (3) 6:39]

James Hudson (Jr.) [(2) 6:23, (3) 6:15]

Jayden Keels (Fr.) [(2) 6:29, (3) 6:30]

Langston Stovall (So.) [(2) 6:30, (3) 6:42]

Dawson Grogan (So.) [(2) 6:44, (3) 6:38]

Julius Gamble (Jr.) [(2) 6:58, (3) 7:31]

Hayward Smith-Cassidy (Sr.) [(2) 6:54, (3) 6:49]

Ian Parsons (Fr.) [(2) 6:57, (3) 6:59]

Jaiden Mosley (Jr.) [(2) 6:59, (3) 7:17]

Tariq Lewis (So.) [(2) 6:57, (3) 6:52]

Desmond Holt (So.) [(2) 7:01, (3) 7:17]

Gavin Foran (Jr.) [(2) 7:37, (3) 7:44]

This event was, no doubt, one of the toughest things you'll do this season. Running an interval workout in a race environment is brutal. Your bodies never fully recovery by the time you start up again and yet you have to force yourself to get back into a rhythm. Some of you performed better than others, but I was very pleased with the effort I saw from every single one of you.

Open Race

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (more than 325 total runners in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the open race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and third mile splits:

68 Michael Metz (Fr.) - 22:30.8 [(1) 7:11, (2) 7:46, (3) 7:34]

76 Christopher Toomer (Fr.) - 22:40.2 [(1) 8:01, (2) 7:40, (3) 6:59]

88 Samuel Cockrell (Fr.) - 23:04.5 [(1) 7:03, (2) 8:04, (3) 7:57]

103 Jonah Lyke (Fr.) - 23:24.3 [(1) 7:38, (2) 8:03, (3) 7:43]

132 Jaden Davis (Fr.) - 24:22.3 [(1) 7:54, (2) 8:16, (3) 8:12]

136 Steven Camarano (So.) - 24:30.8 [(1) 7:08, (2) 8:59, (3) 8:34]

137 Michael Duarte (Fr.) - 24:30.9 [(1) 7:02, (2) 9:17, (3) 8:12]

146 Caleb Ghatt (Sr.) - 24:45.2 [(1) 7:27, (2) 8:54, (3) 8:24]

161 Cameron Polk (Jr.) - 25:11.8 [(1) 8:14, (2) 8:43, (3) 8:15]

175 Jacob Robertson (So.) - 25:39.3 [(1) 8:15, (2) 8:53, (3) 8:31]

189 Jon Kasner (So.) - 26:18.0 [(1) 8:03.2, (2) 9:12, (3) 9:03]

196 Dominic Williams-Dzirasa (Sr.) - 26:26.6 [(1) 7:36, (2) 9:35, (3) 9:16]

259 Yaphet Negussie (Fr.) - 28:30.7 [(1) 9:09, (2) 9:51, (3) 9:31]

280 Georges Tadonki (Fr.) - 29:44.2 [(1) 9:13, (2) 10:17, (3) 10:14]

301 Jaquada Moses (Fr.) - 32:03.8 [(1) 9:40, (2) 11:08, (3) 11:16]

302 Andrew Foreman (Fr.) - 32:07.4 [(1) 9:40, (2) 10:53, (3) 11:34]

305 Maximo Legaspi (Fr.) - 32:08.1 [(1) 9:52, (2) 11:03, (3) 11:14]

310 Jackson McCormick (Fr.) - 33:21.1 [(1) 10:49, (2) 11:25, (3) 11:08]

312 Ian Brown (So.) - 33:31.1 [(1) 9:51, (2) 11:44, (3) 11:57]

College Park parkrun (9/7/19)

We had two athletes run in the College Park parkrun this morning due to a DeMatha chorus retreat. Here are their results. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the parkrun (160 total entries in the race). In brackets is their average mile pace:

26 Lucas Arzayus (Sr.) - 24:29 [7:53]

44 Bodior Elliott (Sr.) - 27:00 [8:41]

Qualifying Times Met

Congratulations to Caleb, Jon, Cameron, Jacob, and Georges on meeting their goal times! Also, both Lucas and Bodior met their goal times at the parkrun!

Those seven, everybody who earned the asterisk next to their names at the parkrun last week, and Langston and Jackson, who hit their goal times independently earlier in the summer, have all earned their entries for every meet going forward!

Final Thoughts

I am blown away by more of today's performances than I have time to elaborate on. Our two relay freshmen, Jayden and Ian, ran incredible consistent 2nd and 3rd mile splits. For these two in particular, I really wish I had been able to get their first mile splits to get a more complete picture of their performances. But both passed the eye test easily.

Michael Metz ran a very smart race as he held back a bit (he was our fourth runner through the mile mark in the open race) but was able to avoid the second-mile slow down that plagued our first three through the mile mark.

Christopher's splits suggest that he held back much more than he needed to in the first mile, but he still ran faster today than he did in last week's parkrun 5k and his third split was faster than the third mile splits of four of our relay runners!

If any of you, especially the new runners on our team, have any questions about why I publish your splits or how to interpret them/what to do with them, please let me know and I'll be more than happy fill you and and help explain what today's splits mean for you.

Quick Preview

The expectation for our remaining athletes going forward is that, on Saturdays, they are either attending meets to support their teammates or they are attending parkruns to try and meet their goal time. Everybody on this team is capable of reaching their goal before Championships!

Next week will afford everybody the opportunity to run a parkrun and attend the meet as we will not leave DeMatha for the Braddock Relays until 2:30pm for the evening relay meet. If you run the parkrun in the morning, you are not required to attend the meet with the team, but you are certainly more than welcome to do so if you are able to commit a full Saturday to team activities).

I will have information on the Braddock Relays out as soon as possible so that you can begin planning for next week since it will be an evening meet with the relay race run under the lights!

"The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be." - Haruki Murakami