2021 Woodward Relays

We couldn't have asked for much better weather than we got today for our return to cross country. Last week's race at the College Park parkrun was a great tuneup, but today was the real deal. The boys were excited to get back to it and so were us coaches.

The meet director and the timing company has a much more elegant setup than we've been used to at this meet. We even had bibs with chips on them so they could get (somewhat) official race splits for the boys. There may have been a few minor issues, though. They messed up the splits for our red team, but their official finish time was exactly what I had on my watch. Then for the other four teams, they seem to have gotten splits similar or identical to mine, but then each of them has an official time three seconds slower than what I had on my watch.

Normally, I cede authority for results to the meet timers, but it appears to me that there may have been a small issue with the clock sometime between our red team finishing and our other four teams, so I'm going to stick with the splits I got for our boys. The official results are good for tracking placement, though.

While our Relay runners won't have PRs or SBs listed, for our Open Race, as always, in blue, I have noted all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k (3.1 mile). In red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. Also, any athletes who have previously run the Open Race at Woodward Relays had an opportunity to set a new PCB (personal course best), and those will be marked in silver.

Boys Relay

First, here are the results for the relay teams (51 total teams in the race). Each team is identified by the color of the baton they were carrying and the number before their color signifies their overall place in the relay race. In brackets are the first, second, and third 2-mile splits (the splits after both athletes on each team had run one, two, and three of their three loops):

8 Red - 34:53.5 [(1) 11:21, (2) 11:45, (3) 11:47]

15 Blue - 35:49.4 [(1) 11:32, (2) 12:17, (3) 12:00]

25 Black - 38:27.3 [(1) 12:18, (2) 13:13, (3) 12:56]

34 Gold - 41:04.9 [(1) 12:59, (2) 14:06, (3) 14:00]

48 Silver - 48:45.6 [(1) 15:20, (2) 16:44, (3) 16:41]

Before we get to the individual athletes' splits, I'd like to mention that when we last competed at Woodward Relays two years ago our fastest team ran 37:50 and our second fastest team ran 38:49, so we put two teams ahead of our fastest relay from 2019 and a third team in front of our second fastest relay from 2019. 

Splits

In brackets are the athletes' first mile, second mile, and third mile splits*, plus their total times:

Jayden Keels (Jr.) [(1) 5:36, (2) 5:43, (3) 5:40, (T) 16:59.0]

Sayid Shakur (So.) [(1) 5:45, (2) 6:02, (3) 6:07, (T) 17:54.5]

Michael Metz (Jr.) [(1) 5:50, (2) 6:09, (3) 6:11, (T) 18:09.9]

Christopher Toomer (Jr.) [(1) 5:42, (2) 6:08, (3) 5:49, (T) 17:39.5]

Tariq Lewis (Sr.) [(1) 6:04, (2) 6:40, (3) 6:44, (T) 19:28.7]

Ian Parsons (Jr.) [(1) 6:14, (2) 6:33, (3) 6:12, (T) 18:58.6]

Jalen Neptune (Fr.) [(1) 6:12, (2) 6:35, (3) 6:44, (T) 19:31.7]

Samuel Cockrell (Jr.) [(1) 6:47, (2) 7:31, (3) 7:16 (T) 21:33.2]

Jackson McCormick (Sr.) [(1) 7:42, (2) 8:22, (3) 8:26, (T) 24:30.2]

Austin Boynes (Sr.) [(1) 7:38, (2) 8:22, (3) 8:15, (T) 24:15.4]

I've said this in the past and I'll say it again. Today's race is one of the most brutal you'll compete in all season. Running mile repeats in a race environment is one of the toughest things you'll ever do, and I'm very impressed with all of our athletes.

Some of you ran it absolutely perfectly, which splits that were almost dead even (Jayden's splits stand out in this regard) or with a steady but gradual decline (Sayid and Micheal's fastest and slowest mile splits were all within about 20 seconds of each other despite their time getting slower on each one. Christopher and Ian both feel significantly off their first mile pace in their second loop of the course, but then on their third miles they returned to roughly their first mile time.

If you went out too fast and found it difficult to recover before your second and third legs, remember that when we return to regular 5k races. You won't have the opportunity to recover the way you did today and so you need to control your first mile. If you found that you had a massive kick at the end, even if you depleted the last of your energy in that sprint there's a good chance that if you had gradually spent that energy in the middle of your race, you wouldn't have been in a position where you had to sprint to beat the runners in your finishing group.

*One thing worth noting is that the listed distance of the open race is 5k, but they ran exactly what each of our relay athletes ran, so my assumption is that our relay runners may have been running closer to 1.03 miles on each of their legs. It's not a huge difference, but it does mean that their true mile splits might be slightly faster than what is recorded below.

Team Results

For today's meet, team results were determined by adding the finishing place of each team's best three relay duos.

1. Winston Churchill 14 points [2, 3, 9]

2. St. John's 24 points [5, 6, 13]

3. Walter Johnson 34 points [1, 12, 21]

4. Bethesda-Chevy Chase 35 points [7, 10, 18]

5. DeMatha 48 points [8, 15, 25]

6. Georgetown Prep 58 points [14, 16, 28]

7. Gaithersburg 70 points [4, 22, 44]

8. Sherwood 76 points [17, 27, 32]

9. St. Andrew's Episcopal 83 points [23, 24, 36]

10. Edmund Burke 127 points [40, 41, 46]

11. Washington Latin 132 points [35, 47, 50]

Open Race

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (91 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the open race. In brackets are their first lap, second lap, and third lap splits:

5 Hayden Walsh (Fr.) - 21:05.6 [(1) 6:33, (2) 7:27, (3) 7:05] PR by 43 seconds

13 William Jackson (Fr.) - 22:32.3 [(1) 7:15, (2) 7:35, (3) 7:42] PR by 1 minute 35 seconds

62 Brendan Dougherty (Fr.) - 28:03.6 [(1) 8:32, (2) 9:55, (3) 9:36]

64 Peter Brown (So.) - 28:58.4 [(1) 8:34, (2) 10:52, (3) 9:32]

76 Maximo Legaspi (Jr.) - 30:12.1 [(1) 8:56, (2) 10:44, (3) 10:31] PCB by 1 minute 53 seconds

77 Ian Brown (Sr.) - 30:21.2 [(1) 8:47, (2) 10:46, (3) 10:49] PCB by 3 minutes 9 seconds

81 Anthony Bardonille (So.) - 31:33.1 [(1) 9:19, (2) 10:49, (3) 11:25]

82 Carter Leecost (Fr.) - 31:48.9 [(1) 9:20, (2) 11:05, (3) 11:23]

I know at the meet I told William that his PR was by closer to two and a half minutes; I misremembered his time from last week's parkrun. Still, he ran a smart race today, slowing down his opening mile by 9 seconds and avoiding the third-mile drop off he had last week, resulting in a huge PR!

Hayden led the way for our open race entrants, running almost the inverse of his strategy last week, when he started in the low 7s, ran under 6:50 for the second mile, and then fell apart in the final mile. Today he went out quite a bit harder than he did last week, lost almost a minute in his second loop of the course, but recovered nicely in the closing mile to hit a sizable PR of his own.

Maximo and Ian last ran this course two years ago and lopped off a lot of time from their previous runs on this course. They were both very close to hitting the 30-minute cutoff time for being entered in future meets. The good news is that I don't have to worry about that for next week because the Eagle Invitational runs their open race at the end of the meet like Woodward did today.

This also means that Anthony and Carter, along with any of our athletes who have not yet been able to run at a race this fall, will be able to race next weekend, too. Anthony had some issues breathing due to allergies and that impacted his race today, significantly. Carter has been making slow and steady progress in practices and I was very impressed with his effort in today's race. Now that he has a sense of the distance, I think another week of improvement in practice will give him an excellent shot of hitting the 30-minute cutoff time next weekend.

And in the middle of today's open race group, I do want to point out that Brendan was less than 10 seconds off his time from last week's parkrun, which is a strong performance given the difficulty of the Georgetown Prep course compared to the pancake-flat parkrun. Peter went out a bit hard, along with Maximo and Ian (the three of them were within about 50 meters of each other at the end of both their first and second laps), and paid the price in his second mile. He finished strong, though, and on the whole I was pleased with his performance on this course, as well.

Final Thoughts

We were missing a handful of guys today, so this isn't all we have in store, but I was absolutely thrilled with what I saw today. The effort, and subsequently the performances, were fantastic. As always, I won't be happy if this is where we end the season, but for our first race of the year I really couldn't be much happier than I am now after today.

Quickly looking back at the relay teams, most of our guys ran total times that would be massive PRs today. While none of them are ready to run that combined time for a full 5k today, I think their total times are a good goal to try and achieve by the end of the season. For some of our guys who are a little behind where they've been in the past, that should be quite easy to achieve and then some. For others, it might be just out of reach but still worth striving for.

Information for next week's Eagle Invitational will be out early in the week, hopefully by Monday evening like last week. I hope today's meet energized everyone else for the next eight week leading up to WCACs (and 10 leading up to the private school state championship) as much as it did for me. Let's keep the momentum from today!

"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional." - Haruki Murakami