Well, it was almost a perfect day for our opening race at Jacksonville State University. The course was in great shape so hats off to coach Steve Ray for getting it ready for the race. The grass was cut short and the ground was quite dry - couldn't ask for much more. It was a bit warmer than we had hoped - the temperature didn't get down into the 50's like MSN had predicted, but it was still quite pleasant.
The women ran first at 9 AM and we had two runners finish in the top 6 - Carolyn Mancuso, our all-conference runner from a year ago just edged Polina Babkina, with both girls covering the 4000m course in 14:31. This is a new school record for 4000m and since we don't run that distance again this season, the new record should last at least a year. We also had 3 other girls finish under 16:00 in the race, with Jessica Gonzalez finishing in an excellent 15:25. Kirstie Lusignan (15:48) and Kelli Hartley (15:40) were the other sub 16:00 finishers. Hannah Sharrow ran a 16:16 which was not bad at all since she was nursing a sore quad muscle and didn't really look comfortable out there.
We finished 2nd to a very strong Divison I Georgia State team. All in all, it was a good beginning for us. We showed we are in good shape and we know what we need to work on. Our biggest "negative" from the race was that we slowed down too much in the 2nd mile. Our goal is always to try and keep the drop off in the 2nd mile down to about 10"-12" and our drop-offs were much larger than that. The good news is that we can fix that in our training. I am glad the girls were able to have some success today as it shows them that their summer training paid off.
The men's race also went well. We finished 2nd to Georgia State University and had some very nice head to head battles with their runners - passing them, getting re-passed by them and passing or trying to pass them at the end of the race. Good stuff.
Austin Enriquez was our top finisher, coming in 5th and covering the 5K distance in 15:25. He went out with the leaders from the very beginning and stubbornly held on before finishing in 5th spot. Fellow seniors Craig Warlick (15:54) and Jonathan Sellers (16:07)also had strong races with Warlick posting his first ever sub 16:00 finish in a cross country meet.
One of the highlights of the men's race was the performance of our pack. We had a gap (45") of less than a minute between our # 1 and our # 6 runners. Ideally, we will be able to get it down to 30" by season's end. It is something we definitely plan to work on.
Sophomore Peter Kazery (16:09) and freshman Cody Lee (16:15) also had very strong races today. Several other freshmen also had PR's in the race so it was a really good day for the guys' squad.
We gave the runners the rest of the Labor Day weekend off. They have a long run scheduled tomorrow (on their own) and an easy run on Monday. We get back to work on Tuesday, Sep 7th and will try to work on reducing the loss of speed in mile # 2 - a problem for more than a few of our runners.
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