A New Season

Another cross season is upon us, and this one promises to be to be good! This is the most talented, prepared and deepest team East Peoria has had in a long time. The boys have put in more miles over the last 3 months than I certainly ever did in high school. We had a new challenge this summer, starting a 500, 750 and 1000 mile club over a 12 week period. They had till September 1 to get them in and I will have 5 over 500 and 2 over 750!

Yesterday was the 3rd annual Run-A-Thon, our fundraiser that is a continuous one mile loop at the course which the boys run for an hour (with out watches) and raise money for every mile they run. This was the last weekend we will have off before racing starts next week at the Canton Invite. The boys ran awsome! Kevin Eades smashed the record running 9.9 miles, Gill 9.5, Alex Cortes 9 (the biggest suprise of all) and a whole host of others at 8.5. I was really pleased with everybodys effort and on top of it they raised enough money to really look after us for the season.

The real suprise was the number of parents and supporters that showed up to cheer on the team yesterday. It is the first time since I arrived here 3 years ago that I had over half the teams parents out to watch. In my opinion that goes a lot further than any big race or 10 mile hour run. The class of freshman and sophmores in particular have a really supportive group of parents that I hope will stay involved.

Like I said our first race of the season in next weekend. Dyestat Il came out with their rankings and although I think we are a top 15 team in the state we didnt even get a mention. Thats the best thing that could have happened to us as the team is really fired up. Its not just me that wants the team to do well and not just one or two individuals, but the whole team is motivated as a group. Ah, the hard part is finally over, it only took me 3 years!!!

I will post pics from the fundraiser along with picks from next weeks race on my next blog. My running has had no signifigant developements in case anybody cares. Ive been running a little on the roads as the uneven surface of the course really bothers it. Ive been biking quite a bit to help me sleep, so there you go.

Thanks for reading and Go Raiders!

tb

Summer Swing

We are officially in full summer training mode here in East Peoria and things couldn't be going better! This is the 8th week of our 10 week summer training program and the team is finally feeling the weight of the mileage. Senior Hugh Gill will definately hit the 750 mile mark that I challenged him to and Kevin Eades, Brant Watson, Alex Cortes and Gage VanOrder will hit the 500 mile mark they set out to conquer on June 1. The boys are back to school in two weeks, which is also when we transition from summer long runs, tempo intervals and hill training to more specific race-pace intervals with rest, shorter hills and long runs at an easier pace.

It has been really nice to have a motivated group that gets together on a daily basis, something that was missing after the seniors left last year. I have been meeting them 3-4 times weekly and they get together most every other day on their own. Sundays have probably been the high light of summer training. We have a 10.3 mile loop from my place that is situated on a 1200 meter climb that is no joke. We leave heading down the hill and do the loop that has two other big hills in it. After the first 3 miles we try to keep the pace under 7 mpm for the next 8, which finishes up the big one. One of my other big challenges to the boys was for someone to break my hill record of 3:06 which Gill finally crushed last week, running 2:50! Afterwards I we have pancakes and very spirited gamef of ping pong, pool and Halo2.

On another front, the local track club held their first summer Youth DevelopementTrack Program this week with much success. The majority of the 100 plus kids that attended were from inner city day camps and have never had any experience with track and field. The camp focused on 6 different diciplines for 20 minutes each. That went on Monday to Thursday and finished with a track meet on Friday. I volunteered to run the distance station, and although I wanted to pull my hair out at times, we had a lot of fun. I just want to say that there is a lot of talent out there and there is a lot of energy, they just need to find some direction. I am looking forward to getting a lot more kids out for next year and running them even harder!

Thats all I have for you now. Looking forward to watching the world champs that are coming up. The running is going ok but the foot still aches. Not sure what is going to happen with this thing. Im just trying to keep positive and cross my fingers that it will all work out. Thanks for reading and Go Raiders!