2023 RVA Relays

We had quite a trip this weekend. We didn't have quite the journey Selesianum had from Delaware, and it was certainly not as long to travel as one team from Ohio. Still, this is the farthest we've traveled for a meet since I became DeMatha's head cross country coach in 2016.

It was a really fun meet. They were much more on top of things than what we saw at the Braddock Relays last fall. Heck, even if they didn't get official splits for each athlete I would have said this considering the fact that we didn't have 60+ teams packed onto the starting line of an eight-lane track to begin the race. My lone complaint came at the start of the championship relay when the announcer began talking on the loud speaker as the starter was beginning the race.

It's a late night and my mother always told me not to stare at elecronics' screens after dark, so let's get down to business. As we dive into the results from this meet, with each result I have included a couple of numbers designated by abbreviations you haven't seen before if you're new to the team.

• "MP" designates an athlete's Mile Pace. While we got mid-race splits for each athletes, unlike a 3-mile race where each split is for the same distance, or even the 5k where each of our three splits is very close in distance, the splits we got for today are essentially for the first two-thirds of your race and the last third of it. Your MP will give you a little more information to be able to determine whether you went out too slowly or too quickly, as well as whether you had too much in the tank at the end of the race.

• "P5" designates your Projected 5k time using a formula devised by marathoner and research engineer Pete Riegel in the late 70s. Using your P5 time, I have also stated whether you set a new virtual PR (personal record) or virtual SB (season best).

  • Note: Your P5 time assumes a 5k course similar to that you ran on (e.g., two circuits of Saturday's 2500m loop) and no strong bias on the part of an individual toward speed or endurance. An athlete who excels more in shorter events (such as the 400m, 800m, and 1600m in track) will probably run a bit slower in the 5k than his P5 time. An athlete who "gets stronger as the distance gets longer" (think of this concept in the same way you'd think of a "rising fastball" in baseball) can probably run a bit faster in the 5k than his P5 time.

For our returning athletes who ran in the Braddock Relays last year, which was a similar meet to The RVA Relays in terms of the running events but on a different course, I have also noted new 2500m PRs if they ran faster than they did last year.

Boys B & C Relay (5x2500m)
Here are the results for our relay teams in the "B&C" mens relay race. I will show individual splits below. Each team is identified by the color of the baton they were carrying. The number in front of each team signifies their overall place in the "B&C" relay race (73 total finishing teams). The numbers in brackets are (AM) the average mile pace for the relay as a whole and (AL) the average split for each leg of the relay as a whole.

39 B Team - 45:47 [(AM) 5:54, (AL} 9:09]
65 C Team - 51:14 [(AM) 6:36, (AL) 10:15]

These are both really impressive times considering we had to move some people around and sub athletes up into some of our relay teams. These guys were also running during a hotter portion of the day with no real escape from the sun.

Splits
Here are the splits for each of our 10 relay runners in the "B&C" relay race. In brackets are their (1) 1-mile split, (1.55) their split for the final 0.55-miles of their leg, (MP) their average mile pace for their leg, and (P5) their projected 5k time. Athletes are listed in the order they appeared on their respective relay teams.

Brandon Smoot (Jr.) -  8:35 [(1) 5:48, (1.55) 2:47, (MP) 5:31, (P5) 17:53] PR by 1 minute 35 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 10 seconds
Phillip Marshall (Fr.) -  8:52 [(1) 5:52, (1.55) 3:00, (MP) 5:42, (P5) 18:29] Virtual PR by 2 minutes 11 seconds
Maxwell Ellison (Jr.) -  9:06 [(1) 6:05, (1.55) 3:01, (MP) 5:51, (P5) 18:58] Virtual PR by 32 seconds
William Herman (So.) -  9:43 [(1) 6:42, (1.55) 3:01, (MP) 6:15, (P5) 20:15] PR by 46 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 10 seconds
Nicholas Berry (So.) -  9:31 [(1) 6:16, (1.55) 3:15, (MP) 6:08, (P5) 19:50] PR by 47 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 18 seconds
Don DeRocha (So.) -  9:44 [(1) 6:20, (1.55) 3:24, (MP) 6:16, (P5) 20:17] Virtual PR by 1 minute 23 seconds
Jesse Holland III (So.) -  9:40 [(1) 6:30, (1.55) 3:10, (MP) 6:13, (P5) 20:09] PR by 54 seconds Virtual PR by 25 seconds
Joseph LeGloahec (So.) -  10:14 [(1) 6:48, (1.55) 3:26, (MP) 6:35, (P5) 21:20] PR by 3 minutes 20 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 3 seconds
Cameron Lamb (So.) -  11:17 [(1) 7:40, (1.55) 3:37, (MP) 7:16, (P5) 23:31] PR by 1 second
Brendan Dougherty (Jr.) -  10:19 [(1) 6:57, (1.55) 3:22, (MP) 6:38, (P5) 21:30] PR by 1 minute 4 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 12 seconds

Well done, everyone! Everyone who had previously run a 2500m race for DeMatha set a new PR today and nearly everybody set a new virtual PR. I'll mention that this course is remarkably fast, almost certainly the fastest on the east coast. Still, the fact that many of your virtual PRs were by more than a minute definitely suggests that you'll be ready to run some really impressive times in two weeks at Glory Days. Their course isn't as fast as this one, but it's a very PR-friendly course and you'll have two additional weeks of training under your belts.

I want to give a quick shoutout to Cameron and Brendan. Cameron knew early in the week that there was a chance he would be called upon to run today, but we didn't know for certain that Daden wouldn't be able to go until yesterday morning. Then at the last minute we had to scratch Sayid as a precaution due to a little tweak in his calf, and thankfully Brendan was available so we wouldn't have to scratch the C team entirely.

Don and Jesse did a great job heading the C team, as did Brandon and Phillip on the B team.

I'm really impressed with Phillip's run today. As a freshman, he's still learning how to run the 5k, and he's now run three different distances in his last three races (2 miles at Trials of Miles, 5k at Chesapeake, and now 2500m (1.55 miles) at the RVA Relays). Hopefully having a rest week next Saturday will provide an opportunity for him to "reset."

Men's Championship Relay (5x2500m)
Here is the result for our relay team in the mens championship relay. I will show individual splits below. The number in front of our team signifies its overall place in the championship relay (54 total team finishers). The numbers in brackets are (AM) the average mile pace for the relay as a whole and (AL) the average split for each leg of the relay as a whole.

29 A Team - 39:45 [(AM) 5:07, (AL) 7:57] 

As far as I can tell, this is a DeMatha record. This time is about 2 minutes and 21 seconds faster than our A relay's time at least year's Braddock Relays, which was the fastest 5x2500m relay team I had coached to that point. And as far back as I have records for, the previous DeMatha record for the event was 40:24 (5:15/mile) at the Brentsville Relays in 2007 (I was a part of that relay along with Robert Patterson '09, who is right behind me on DeMatha's all-time cross country rankings).

I don't remember all the details of that Brentsville course. I remember it being fairly flat, maybe not quite as flat as the course we ran today but I don't remember any hills that would have slowed the course down significantly. I doubt it was more difficult by a degree of 40 seconds, which is what today's team beat that team by.

Splits
Here are the splits for each of our 5 relay runners in the championship relay. In brackets are their (1) 1-mile split, (1.55) their split for the final 0.55-miles of their leg, (MP) their average mile pace for their leg, and (P5) their projected 5k time. Athletes are listed in the order they appeared on their respective relay teams.

Chase Lopez (Sr.) -  7:20 [(1) 4:56, (1.55) 2:24, (MP) 4:43, (P5) 15:17] Virtual PR by 2 minutes
Tarik Harris Jr. (Sr.) -  7:51 [(1) 5:11, (1.55) 2:40, (MP) 5:03, (P5) 16:22] PR by 41 seconds Virtual PR by 53 seconds
Jalen Neptune (Jr.) -  8:11 [(1) 5:25, (1.55) 2:46, (MP) 5:16, (P5) 17:03] PR by 59 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 8 seconds
Graham Fenn (Sr.) -  8:05 [(1) 5:34, (1.55) 2:31, (MP) 5:12, (P5) 16:51] PR by 31 seconds Virtual PR by 7 seconds
Roman Zentek (So.) -  8:18 [(1) 5:29, (1.55) 2:49, (MP) 5:21, (P5) 17:18] PR by 1 minute 6 seconds Virtual PR by 1 minute 27 seconds

Our guys should be extremely proud of their performances. Graham is getting back to where we need him to be and know he can be, Roman continues to get stronger every race, and Chase and TJ are have both done a great job leading our varsity guys in two meets without Sayid.

Jalen was dealing with a little bit of an issue with his chest as he approached me at the mile mark, but he found a second wind or something because he finished very strong and seemed to be feeling just fine after the race.

Final Thoughts

I'm really happy with the effort I saw from our guys today. That was a really fun meet but it was also pretty hot when the B & C teams ran and it was a long wait for our A team. Thankfully the temperatures cooled and the conditions were perfect for that last race of the evening.

It must be said that The Height looked outstanding. Their B & C teams both finished ahead of our B team in the first race, and their A team finished 4th with a time of 37:41. They finished just over 2 minutes ahead of us. Yes, we were missing Sayid today, but considering the first athlete to ever break 7 minutes on this course did so last year and nobody did so today, I doubt his presence would have brought us down to any lower than 38:30.

So that's now two very strong teams we've seen first hand this season after Gonzaga won the Trials of Miles event. We have our work cut out for us if we want to at least accomplish our secondary goal of a third consecutive finish among the top two in our conference.

On that note, we're trying something a little different this year with our schedule, as you may have noticed. I typically haven't built bye weeks into our schedule. Last year we had one Saturday off but it was unplanned (the Don Stoner Invitational got rained out on October 1).

Part of my hesitancy to build in bye weeks is the fear that if a meet on our schedule gets rained out, then we may have wasted a weekend that we could have raced. Another fear is that our more inexperienced athletes will lose valuable opportunities to get more familiar and comfortable with the distance we race.

What overcame that fear this year was the fact that I could see our athletes, particularly some of our varsity athletes, fading a bit as we approached the WCAC Championship last year. I think we peaked about two weeks early, and while out athletes were able to maintain that peak well enough for us to win the title, it was a pretty close call. My hope is that by building in a couple of weeks where we can focus on training but then get two rest days on the weekend, our athletes will be at their best when it counts.

For our athletes who are less experienced, however, it might be beneficial to go to a parkrun and get another 5k in. I'll leave it up to you. This is going to be a challenging week of workouts, and if you chose to run this weekend's parkrun as a few athletes noted above did, I strongly suggest you do not race next week. But if you took this weekend off and would like to get a little more familiar with the distance, let me know and we will slightly decrease your training volume for this week so that you can run in next week's parkrun. If you do so, you'll use the same barcode as you did for our last parkrun (see the information from that race if you didn't run it with us).

As we move into the middle of our season, commit yourselves to staying focused in practice. In cross country, when our weekly routine doesn't change all that much, it's easy to lose focus and take for granted that you know what to do and can let your body go on auto-pilot while you turn your attention to conversations during the warmup and cool down. Don't fall into that trap. I promise you that no matter how much you think you're stretching while conversing with your teammates, you aren't. We only have six more weeks until WCACs and then another seven days of practice between then and the Private School state championship. Stay focused.

"Make sure your worst enemy doesn't live between your own two ears." - Laird Hamilton