2021 College Park parkrun #1

It sure felt good to be back out on a race course this morning, kicking off our 2021 fall season.  We ran this course a few times last fall before the two scrimmage meets at Holy Cross but it was nice to see more than just our guys on the trail today and it really made it feel cross country is truly back this fall.

Thank you to everyone for their punctuality in getting to the course this morning with plenty of time to conduct our temperature checks and go through our full warmup routine. As we move forward through the season it will be important that we continue to get health screenings done prior to arrival so that process can continue to move as smoothly (or even more-so) as it did this morning.

For those who are new to the program, what follows is our athletes' results for today's parkrun. They are formatted the same way you'll see them in my post-meet write-ups all season. If your name has a blue asterisk (*) next to it, that means I have no records of a previous 5k for you and today's race is your starting PR (personal record).

For our returning athletes, in blue, I have noted all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k (3.1 mile). And in silver, I have noted all athletes who set a new PCB (personal course best) for the Paint Branch Trail out-and-back 5k course (if you've never run this course before, today's run is your current PCB).

Open Race

Here are the results for all of our athletes (161 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

3 Jayden Keels (Jr.) - 17:46 [(1) 5:27, (2) 5:55, (3.1) 6:24] PR by 3 seconds - PCB by 20 seconds

5 Sayid Shakur (So.) - 19:11 [(1) 6:07, (2) 6:10, (3.1) 6:54]

6 Michael Metz (Jr.) - 19:16 [(1) 6:08, (2) 6:10, (3.1) 6:58] PR by 3 seconds - PCB by 21 seconds

7 Christopher Toomer (Jr.) - 19:26 [(1) 6:15, (2) 6:30, (3.1) 6:41] PCB by 1 minute 14 seconds

8 Ian Parsons (Jr.) - 19:27 [(1) 6:05, (2) 6:21, (3.1) 7:01] PCB by 23 seconds

9 Jalen Neptune (Fr.) - 19:52 [(1) 6:18, (2) 6:28, (3.1) 7:06] PR by 22 seconds - PCB by 22 seconds

12 Tariq Lewis (Sr.) - 20:39 [(1) 6:15, (2) 6:44, (3.1) 7:40] PCB by 30 seconds

16 Hayden Walsh (Fr.) - 21:49 [(1) 7:06, (2) 6:48, (3.1) 7:55]*

19 Samuel Cockrell (Jr.) - 22:21 [(1) 6:30, (2) 7:20, (3.1) 8:31]

27 William Jackson (Fr.) - 24:07 [(1) 7:06, (2) 7:38, (3.1) 9:23]*

33 Jacob Robertson (Sr.) - 25:19 [(1) 7:33, (2) 8:33, (3.1) 9:13] PCB by 22 seconds

34 Jackson McCormick (Sr.) - 25:23 [(1) 7:09, (2) 8:53, (3.1) 9:21] PCB by 3 minutes 17 seconds

47 Isaias Blandino (Fr.) - 27:43 [(1) 8:16, (2) 8:29, (3.1) 10:58]*

50 Brendan Dougherty (Fr.) - 27:56 [(1) 8:22, (2) 8:59, (3.1) 10:35]*

54 Peter Brown (So.) - 28:07 [(1) 8:20, (2) 9:22, (3.1) 10:25] PR by 47 seconds - PCB by 47 seconds

Notably, Ian Parsons was only 10 seconds off of his PR from the 2019 WCAC Championship, Christopher Toomer was just 22 seconds off his PR, which he set twice on the same course at both the 2019 Glory Days Invitational and the 2019 WCAC Championship, and Tariq Lewis was just 24 seconds off his PR from the 2019 Landon Invitational. We'll be running that course in just three weeks!

Final Thoughts

Congratulations to everybody who ran today. Everyone broke 30 minutes, so everybody who ran today will be entered in every meet this season, regardless of whether JV runs after or before the other groups. That was one of our primary goals for today's parkrun.

Another goal was to get a feeling for the distance we'll be racing all season. While occasionally we may compete at meets with odd distances, such as a 3-mile course or the 5x2500m relay we ran a couple years ago at the Braddock Relays, the vast majority of our races will be the distance we ran today.

Now our newcomers have an idea of what to expect each week. The courses will change, the surfaces will change, and the topography (i.e. hill profile) will change from course to course. But the distance will remain mostly consistent, and I don't think any of our meets this year will deviate from the 5k distance we ran today.

Learn from today.

Some of you might notice that your splits got faster from mile to mile. Hayden ran his second mile almost 20 seconds faster than his first mile and managed to run his last 1.1 miles at a similar pace to his first mile (7:12/mile pace). This usually suggests that he could go out a little faster in the first mile and still be able to maintain a strong pace through the final two thirds of his race.

Some of you may have run very consistent splits. Christopher Toomer, as we saw through his freshman season two years ago, ran very even splits today. His second mile was only 15 seconds slower than his first, and his pace for the final 1.1 miles  was a 6:05, 10 seconds faster than his first mile split. Likewise, the indication is that Chris could run the first portion of his race faster and maintain a strong pace through the later parts.

Chris came through the mile mark about 8 seconds behind Sayid and Michael, who kept a nearly identical pace through their second and third miles, with all three portions being within 10 seconds per mile of each other. He might consider trying to close that gap and run with them in the early portion of the race and see if he continues to get stronger through the race as he has in the past. Meanwhile, Sayid and Michael could both probably run their first miles down around 6 flat or just under and have enough in the tank to keep their rhythm.

Meanwhile, others found that their splits become significantly slower after the first mile. This is very common, especially for newer runners. I didn't see any drop offs from Mile 1 to Mile 2 that were catastrophic, but several athletes lost well over a minute from their pace going from Mile 2 to the final 1.1 miles. What this most likely means is that you need to slow down just a bit in the first mile to conserve energy, at least until your endurance has improved, which it will as you continue to adjust and get used to our training schedule.

An important thing to be aware of at all times is that you need to be intelligent runners and consider how you felt at the end of your race. If you were able to finish at a dead sprint, you almost certainly didn't make up as much time in the final 100m as you could have made up by increasing your pace through the previous 4900m. If you felt like you could have run another mile or two as you approached the finishing area, you probably left a lot out on the course. If you were completely gassed as you passed the golf course and returned under the bridge into the final quarter mile, you may have overexerted yourself in the early stages.

If any of those things apply to you and you want to talk about how to strategize better for your races going forward, Coach Anthony, Coach Hoke, and I are all here to help you to think through your races. Our jobs are to be teachers. We're out there at every race to cheer you on, but we never want to have to coach you during your race. If we've done our jobs right, we'll have done all of that during the week and you'll know exactly what you need to do to execute on race day. And then if it doesn't work, we can make adjustments during the next week.

I'm very pleased with everybody's performances today. None of us are anywhere near where we should be by season's end, but as a starting point we should all be happy with how we did today.

I will have information for next week's race at the Woodward Relays out early this coming week, along with a signup list for parents to help us with having drinks and snacks for the boys at the meet, as we've done in the past.

"Every marathon I ran, I knew I had a faster one in me." - Dick Beardsley