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2009 Weekly Update - Sept. 27, 2009

This Past Week
 
We are in the heart of the XC Season now.  The meets are coming fast and furious.
 
On Tuesday we went to Burlington Township and had a very, very successful meet.  We won!  19-40 against Burlington Twp, 20-39 against RV, 15-49 against Maple Shade and 15-50 against Riverside.  We executed our plan up and down the lineup.  And it was great to see Robinson and Weintraub back up top.
 
We had 27 PR's on the day - Lee, Khan, Carrigan, Alex Cain, Schlesinger, Saraf, Howard, Cory Klawunn, Geaney, Quien, Siegel, Fowler, Connor Ems, Van Fossen, Spirgel, Mitch Cain, Sheehan, Shipley, Forrest Klawunn, Schwartz, Bennett, Rothenberger, Szumski, Inglis, Robinson and Horten.  11 of those are year-over-year PR's, which of course are harder than first year PR's since some are the first ever 5K.  16 of our top 20 got a PR.  This is important because it means we are improving and on our way up.
 
So far this year, we have 13 Varsity Winners on the team right now.  We had 21 last year.  A bunch of guys  are within reach.
 
This year we started a new tradition of handing out shoelaces for special performances.  Here are the shoelace winners from Tuesday's meet:
Weintraub - First race back, won, but the real reason is his demonstration of the Netty Pot.  Check out the photos on the Facebook MXC page.
Monaghan - Ran a competitive race.  Putting to use all that great summer mileage and believing in himself and the team.
Sheehan - A long road, but he has finally broken out.  His last PR was early his Frosh year, then injury and burn-out.  But he kept with it.  Great mileage, year round commitment.  He's having fun.
Fowler - 19:59 - 40 second improvement over last year.  Break out race.  Competitive.
Regan - 20:08 - Won the JV Race.  Passed a ton of people that started 1:25 ahead.
Geaney - 21:28 - over a minute faster than last week.  Working hard every day.  Very competitive last mile - real focus and concentration.
Karp - Tree Hugger.  Yes, he literally ran into a tree...
Carrigan & Kahn - Improved 2:05 and 3:22 respectively.  This is the kind of dedication required from everyone on the team.  Work every day and focus on running the best race you can.  Then go out and do it again!
 
On Saturday we went to the South Jersey Shootout on a great day to run.  And most of the guys were able to take advantage of this difficult course (typically a slower course than the flatter course we ran on Tuesday).  There were 17 new PR's, and Lavery joined our list of Varsity winners by dipping under 19:00.
 
The Freshmen started off the day well for us, collecting 4 medals - Van Fossen, Ems, Siegel and Klawunn.  Van Fossen was tough up top, locking in a Top Ten finish.  Ems and Siegel were an inseparable team, helping each other all day and moving up thru the packs after a nice conservative Moorestown start.  Klawunn and Orzechowicz also did a nice job of working together for the first mile and a half of the race.  Schelsinger deserves special credit for the most outrageous run - he slipped, fell on his butt and threw up.  If he doesn't get a shoelace for that, I am not quite sure how to earn one...  We'll see what Eagles has to say on Monday...
 
The JV race was awesome.  It almost brought tears to my eyes to see the top pack of Klawunn, Schwartz, Sheehan, Lavery, Shipley and Bennett emerge from the weeds before the mile marker locked together as a pack in 18th and moving up calmly, yet determined.  I believe they all brought home medals.  The first four ran breakout races, and Schwartz had the best finish of the day - just refusing the yield to the other runners around him down the final straightway.
 
My favorite race of the day was delivered by Spirgel.  He started out very conservatively and was 42nd a bit before the 2 mile mark.  He made up all sorts of time and places and earned a medal.  He is now only 8 seconds away from a Varsity letter.
 
The Shootout has a unique format breaking up the top 7 race into three separate races.  We actually score better in a normal invitational because of our depth.  Many of the teams that beat us today would have lost to us in a regularly scored meet because our 5-6-7 runners are much better than most teams.  So in a big invitational meet like we will be running next weekend, our 5th man might finish 50th and only count 50 points, where another team's 5th man might finish in 100th and score 100 points - hurting the team total score.
 
Our 5-6-7 runners started things off and ran great.  Inglis finished 4th, and is one of the toughest runners I have seen.  As he gets more miles and strength, he could become quite good over the next three years.  Rothenberger continues his impressive rate of improvement, dropping 26 seconds from his PR.  Ems suffered from having a few days off the past couple of weeks, but still ran a decent time to take 12th place in the race.
 
Greenwood ran his first 5K of the season and ran the 3-4 race with Robinson.  They went out pretty aggressively, but held on to a 9th and 12th place - also good for medals.  In the Stud Race, our lack of experience showed.  Weintraub is making great progress after taking two weeks off with a hip issue, but he is still not in top form.  Horton spent most of his energy running around all morning during the other races.  For future meets, he is officially placed on "Tent Arrest".
 
The amazing thing is how tight our spread is.  That is a XC coaching term describing how far apart the first and 5th or 7th man are.  Our best time by Horten was 17:16 and Inglis' 5th was 17:47 - a remarkable spread of only 28 seconds.  Ems 17:59 as our 7th man is a very small 43 seconds.  Coaches typically like to see about a minute spread (which we may get to if Horten stops doing wind sprints with the new mascot (OMG - it won "Best Mascot" at the meet) 2 hours before his race...
 
Interesting Fact:  Sam Weintraub Freshman PR was 21:47.  Paul Rothenberger's Freshman PR was 22:34. 
 
This Coming Week
 
Monday - Practice at 8AM.  Long Run.
 
Tuesday - New Egypt Batch Meet.  This is a great chance to run fast.  Sophomores and Freshmen will not be running.  Bus right after school - it is a long ride - so get down as soon as classes let out.  Remember to bring a snack!
 
Thursday - Burlington County Frosh/Soph Meet at RV.  http://home.comcast.net/~ecolona/ED2.htm   This is a great meet with a lot of hardware (medals) available!  This is why the Frosh/Sophs will not be racing on Tuesday so they can key on this meet.
 
Saturday - Shore Coaches at Holmdel - http://nj.milesplit.us/uploads/user_files/899/09shorecoachesxc.pdf.  We should be running at 12:05 Boys Frosh B, 12:40 - Boys JV C, and 1:20 - Boys Varsity C.  This is an amazing meet with 24 separate races with schools divided up by size.  The competition will be even tougher than this past weekend and with the Holmdel Hills, it will be time to come ready to run!