2024 College Park parkrun #1

Today's intro is quite brief because, as you know, I was not able to attend today's parkrun.

I want to start by congratulating everyone, particularly those who ran their first career 5k today! Whether you hit the 30-minute benchmark today or not, this was a great opportunity to familiarize (or re-familiarize) yourself with this distance. You will improve as you learn better how to run.

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). I know some of our new athletes have run the distance before and may have set new PRs, but I only track your DeMatha times here. 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 as a DeMatha student before, today's run is your current PCB and I've placed a silver asterisk (*) next to your time).

Open Race

Here are the results for all of our athletes (404 total entries in the run - I saw a lot of parents in the results; Well done!). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the race. In brackets are their first mile, middle 1.1 mile, and last mile splits:

4 Brandon Smoot (Sr) - 17:43 [(1) 5:33, (2.1) 6:31, (3.1) 5:39] PR & PCB by 1 minute 17 seconds
10 Arvin Mirchandani (So) - 18:44 [(1) 5:42, (2.1) 6:53, (3.1) 6:09] PR & PCB by 47 seconds
12 Phillip Marshall (So) - 19:04 [(1) 5:58, (2.1) 7:00, (3.1) 6:06]
20 Andrew Stinson (Fr) - 19:41 [(1) 6:16, (2.1) 7:07, (3.1) 6:18]*
25 Lucas Moisiuk (Fr) - 19:52 [(1) 6:21, (2.1) 7:02, (3.1) 6:29]*
29 Jesse Holland III (Jr) - 20:18 [(1) 6:21, (2.1) 7:18, (3.1) 6:39] PR by 3 seconds PCB by 32 seconds
34 Maxwell Ellison (Sr) - 20:47 [(1) 6:35, (2.1) 7:30, (3.1) 6:42]
35 Nicholas Berry (Jr) - 20:47 [(1) 6:27, (2.1) 7:41, (3.1) 6:39]
38 Alexander Soto (Fr) - 20:53 [(1) 6:42, (2.1) 7:30, (3.1) 6:41]*
41 Cameron Lamb (Jr) - 21:06 [(1) 6:32, (2.1) 7:49, (3.1) 6:45] Ties PR & PCB
45 Don DeRocha Jr (Jr) - 21:27 [(1) 6:21, (2.1) 7:37, (3.1) 7:29]
50 Tyler Ellis (Sr) - 21:38 [(1) 6:24, (2.1) 8:13, (3.1) 7:01]
60 Brendon Dougherty (Sr) - 22:52 [(1) 6:54, (2.1) 8:29, (3.1) 7:29]
69 Ryan Pickett (Jr) - 23:22 [(1) 7:16, (2.1) 8:24, (3.1) 7:42]
80 Jacob Schneider (Fr) - 24:06 [(1) 7:17, (2.1) 8:24, (3.1) 7:42]*
82 Tyson Woods (Jr) - 24:12 [(1) 7:22, (2.1) 8:55, (3.1) 7:55] PR by 21 seconds PCB by 24 seconds
83 Renaud Williams (So) - 24:12 [(1) 7:24, (2.1) 8:49, (3.1) 7:59] PCB by 3 minutes 52 seconds
87 Elijah Hawkins (So) - 24:26 [(1) 7:28, (2.1) 9:17, (3.1) 7:41]*
92 Julian Righi (So) - 24:42 [(1) 7:14, (2.1) 8:54, (3.1) 8:34]*
93 Julian Maring (So) - 24:45 [(1) 7:32, (2.1) 9:03, (3.1) 8:10]
97 Xavier Raymond (Jr) - 24:59 [(1) 7:09, (2.1) 9:22, (3.1) 8:28]
98 Alexander Davis (Jr) - 25:01 [(1) 7:39, (2.1) 9:09, (3.1) 8:13]
108 Kazuki Reeves (So) - 25:51 [(1) 7:20, (2.1) 8:04, (3.1) 10:27]*
115 Olutimilehin Adefiyiju (Fr) - 26:28 [(1) 8:30, (2.1) 9:44, (3.1) 8:14]*
215 Stavros Rodousakis (Fr) - 32:04 [(1) 8:44, (2.1) 12:03, (3.1) 11:17]*
240 Jaidon Contreras (Fr) - 33:13 [(1) 8:44, (2.1) 12:44, (3.1) 11:45]*
241 Akintunde Shoetan (Sr) - 33:14 [(1) 8:08, (2.1) 13:20, (3.1) 11:46]
247 Devin Lewis (Sr) - 33:27 [(1) 9:23, (2.1) 12:53, (3.1) 11:11] PCB by 2 minutes 9 seconds
265 Emilio Chicas (Fr) - 35:36 [No splits available]*

We also had a few former team members in the results from today's parkrun. Congrats to each of them!

28 Ian Parson '23 - 20:03
40 Corlie Jackson McCormick '22 - 21:05
299 Yaphet Negussie '23 - 39:35

With 29 athletes finishing today's race, this is the most athletes we've had at our season-opening parkrun since before Covid when we had 31 race in 2019!

Brandon Smoot was just 8 seconds away from posting the first Top 100 time of the season among DeMatha cross country runners since 2000. A PR by over a minute for a guy who already has two season under his belt is very impressive.

Andrew and Lucas set a DeMatha freshman record by becoming the first duo to break 20 minutes at the season-opening College Park parkrun. Alex was only about a minute back, so we've at least got a very strong trio of freshmen.

I like seeing all these PRs and course bests. Two of our guys were within 30 seconds of their PRs today and a few others were within a minute. It's pretty common for athletes to see a small drop-off in 5k performance from the end of one season to the start of another as their training cycle resets. The good news is that most of our returning athletes ran faster today than they did in the first parkrun last season, which lends itself well to them all reaching higher peaks this season than they did in 2023.

I want to thank Will Herman, Joe LeGloahec, and Roman Zentek for being at the parkrun today even though they weren't running and working together to get splits. With Emilio coming out for the first time late in the week they probably just didn't recognize him out on the course, but I'm quite impressed they didn't miss any other splits. Even us coaches occasionally miss a split and have to estimate it based on where they say there were in relation to other athletes at the checkpoints.

Final Thoughts

Because I've been working on this a few minutes at a time over the course of the day and don't want to take any longer, I'm recylcing some thoughts from last year's season-opening parkrun.

If this was the first time you've ever run a 5k, be proud of that accomplishment. We hope to accomplish much more this season, but celebrate every victory you can along the way. This is one of those victories.

If you did not break 30 minutes today, don't fret. Because of the inclusion of a college races (a 6k for the men and a 5k for the women) before the varsity boys high school race, we have enough time between the JV and varsity races  for anybody who has not broken 30 minutes yet this season to be entered in the JV race at Trials of Miles.

Information for the upcoming week and next Friday's meet is on the website. Athletes, time permitting I will be sending to your emails by Monday morning  recommended training paces for this week's workouts. If you did not run today, you may not see paces next to your names. I'll do my best to provide something for our returning runners, but I don't yet have a strong baseline for our new athletes. If you've found that you can stick with one or more of your teammates over the past couple weeks in practice, see if their pace still works for you this week.

Parents, you'll receive an email from SignUpGenius soon that you can use to volunteer to bring water, gatorade, and various snacks for the athletes to have at next Friday's meet.

Thanks everyone and congratulations! We've officially begun the 2024 season!

"I feel like I have another level every time I start a new season... If I continue to keep growing, and make everything consistent, I'm going to get better and better each year." - Victor Oladipo '10