2025 College Park parkrun #2

It was a chilly morning, so I appreciate our athletes making the effort to be out at the Paint Branch Trail at or close to 8 a.m. so everyone had time to warm up properly. I think those warmups paid off as we had a lot of great times at today's parkrun.

Today was also special for the College Park parkrun as they celebrated the 9th birthday of the event. They've always been gracious hosts when we show up, so it was a nice treat to be part of that celebration.

Let's jump right into things. As uaual, I have marked in blue all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k at the parkrun. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. For athletes who have run this event before with us, 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.

Open Race

Here are the results for all of our athletes (246 total entries in the run - I saw several parents on the course and 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 Jesse Holland III (Sr.) - 18:15 [(1) 5:43, (2.1) 6:49, (3.1) 5:43] PR & PCB by 4 seconds
5 Jeremy Juste (Sr.) - 18:16 [(1) 5:43, (2.1) 6:49, (3.1) 5:44] PR by 46 seconds PCB by 2 minutes 32 seconds
6 Elijah Hawkins (Jr.) - 18:16 [(1) 5:39, (2.1) 6:53, (3.1) 5:44] PR by 11 seconds PCB by 1 minute 50 seconds
7 Dominic Hilton (So.) - 18:17 [(1) 5:39, (2.1) 6:52, (3.1) 5:46] PR by 8 seconds PCB by 1 minute 29 seconds
8 Don DeRocha Jr. (Sr.) - 18:20 [(1) 5:44, (2.1) 6:49, (3.1) 5:47] PR & PCB by 41 seconds
12 Cameron Lamb (Sr.) - 19:31 [(1) 6:00, (2.1) 7:20, (3.1) 6:11] PR by 18 seconds PCB by 1 minute 12 seconds
14 Alexander Soto (So.) - 19:55 [(1) 5:57, (2.1) 7:29, (3.1) 6:29] PR & PCB by 8 seconds
15 William Herman (Sr.) - 20:01 [(1) 6:23, (2.1) 7:23, (3.1) 6:15] PR by 11 seconds PCB by 24 seconds
19 Renaud Williams (Jr.) - 20:26 [(1) 6:16, (2.1) 7:31, (3.1) 6:39] PCB by 32 seconds
24 Fareed Rahi (Fr.) - 20:44 [(1) 6:31, (2.1) 7:37, (3.1) 6:36] PCB by 2 minutes 1 second
25 Joseph LeGloahec (Sr.) - 20:46 [(1) 6:30, (2.1) 7:41, (3.1) 6:35] PCB by 20 seconds
26 Satchel Drabinski (Fr.) - 20:49 [(1) 6:31, (2.1) 7:39, (3.1) 6:39] PCB by 2 minutes 15 seconds
31 Ryan Pickett (Sr.) - 21:41 [(1) 6:13, (2.1) 8:05, (3.1) 7:23]
33 Tyson Woods (Sr.) - 21:41 [(1) 6:51, (2.1) 8:05, (3.1) 6:45] PR by 23 seconds PCB by 42 seconds
34 Michael Bridges (Fr.) - 21:48 [(1) 7:01, (2.1) 8:06, (3.1) 6:41] PCB by 2 minutes 39 seconds
42 Dane Kuzner (So.) - 22:59 [(1) 6:56, (2.1) 8:18, (3.1) 7:45] PCB by 3 minutes 46 seconds
43 Oluwatoni "Toni" Adefiyiju (Fr.) - 23:05 [(1) 7:04, (2.1) 8:41, (3.1) 7:21] PR by 26 seconds PCB by 4 minutes 40 seconds
48 John Tomas Felicio (So.) - 23:37 [(1) 7:02, (2.1) 8:46, (3.1) 7:49] PR by 6 seconds
50 Julian Righi (So.) - 23:41 [(1) 7:03, (2.1) 8:47, (3.1) 7:51] PR & PCB by 49 seconds
51 Chase Osby (Jr.) - 23:57 [(1) 7:13, (2.1) 8:50, (3.1) 7:54] PR by 36 seconds PCB by 4 minutes 27 seconds
55 Terence Rascher (So.) - 24:02 [(1) 6:59, (2.1) 9:13, (3.1) 7:50] PR by 27 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 22 seconds
63 Nathaniel Garvin Jr. (Fr.) - 24:59 [(1) 7:52, (2.1) 9:07, (3.1) 8:00]
64 Stephen Lawrence Jr. (Fr.) - 24:59 [(1) 7:52, (2.1) 9:07, (3.1) 8:00] PCB by 20 seconds
72 Ryan Hickey (Fr.) - 25:48 [(1) 7:44, (2.1) 9:25, (3.1) 8:39]
75 Luke Anthony Quach (Fr.) - 26:22 [(1) 8:31, (2.1) 9:33, (3.1) 8:18] PCB by 7 minutes 31 seconds
94 Sebastian Righi (Fr.) - 28:02 [(1) 8:31, (2.1) 10:23, (3.1) 9:08] PR by 38 seconds PCB by 2 minutes 36 seconds
102 Olademeji "Akin" Alade (Fr.) - 28:24 [(1) 8:17, (2.1) 10:28, (3.1) 9:39] PR by 31 seconds PCB by 9 minutes 56 seconds
109 Jaidon Contreras (So.) - 28:51 [(1) 7:20, (2.1) 12:46, (3.1) 8:45]

We also had a former team member in the results from today's parkrun. Congrats to him!

21 Olutimilehin "Timi" Adefiyiju (So.) - 20:35 [(1) 6:17, (2.1) 7:37, (3.1) 6:41]

Glancing through these results, I'm really impressed with a lot of our athletes' performances. Jeremy took a huge step forward today and put his varsity spot for championships on lock.

Of our athletes who did not run a new PR today, a few still had noteworthy performances. Renaud was right in the PR range despite the cold air affecting his breathing quite a bit during the race. His time today was two seconds faster than his MDXC time last week and was only about 2 second off the PR he set at Chesapeake earlier this season. He's still in excellent form entering our postseason.

Joe and Satchell were both just 5 seconds off the PRs they ran last week at MDXC and Dane was less than 20 seconds off his PR, also set a week ago.

I also want to highlight Fareed and Michael. They were both roughly 35 seconds off the PRs they set at Chesapeake last month, but they're still in good form. Fareed was just 4 seconds off his MDXC time from last week while Michael finished today's parkrun 18 seconds faster than he did at MDXC.

One of the reasons I like to have us back at the parkrun for our WCAC Championship tuneup is because it's a great opportunity to see how far our athletes have come since the start of the season.

I especially like to see how far our freshmen have come in just these past eight weeks. Of our ten freshmen who ran today, nine ran at our first parkrun back on August 23. Of those nine, seven of them ran at least 2 minutes faster today than they did two months ago!

Not only are they much stronger now than they were two months ago, but they're using the experience they've gained from running all these 5ks and are using that knowledge to improve their performances.

Akin ran nearly 10 minutes faster today than he did in August. In addition to his added experience, I think this speaks to just how affected he was by that early-season back injury. It's been awesome to see him feeling and running better in practice and in meets over these past four weeks or so.

Final Thoughts

I really liked what I saw with the pack running from our athletes up front. Dom, Elijah, Jesse, Jeremy, and Don came through the 2.1-mile mark within seconds of each other. If we can pack run like this next week, we'll be set up to perform very well as a team as long as we're not sacrificing our positioning in the race to do it.

The hope is Phillip and Luke will both be at 100% and will find good spots near the front of the race next week to keep our early position points low. But if one or two of our leaders from today can move up closer to them and have the last three or four varsity guys in a tight formation within 20 or 30 seconds of them, we'll have a good shot at a strong team finish.

I know several of our athletes are feeling some anxiety over the location of the WCAC Championship next week. I promise as soon as I know anything I'll pass that information on.

It is important to remember, however, that the location of championships is ultimately unimportant. There are pros and cons to nearly any site the league could choose. But every athlete on every team is going to have to deal with the same situation we will, whether it be course-dependent elements like hills, footing, and road crossing or course-independent elements like the weather and time of day.

All we can do is trust that we have built up experience handling all sorts of courses, all sorts of weather, and racing at different times of day. Know that this experience will have us ready to face whichever course the league decides we will compete at next week.