IN THE ARENA WITH TIM

Short Summer

2010-07-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start this blog off the same as I always do, apologizing for not keeping everyone updated. It has been a crazy June to say the least. From finishing up coaching at EP, to flying to Eugene to recruit new athletes for the fall ITA training group, to hosting/race directing for the Steamboat Classic, to taking a trip to Des Moines for the USA national championships, to spending countless hours making calls and replying to emails concerning the new program, and finally organizing and running a summer training clinic for some of the serious local high school runners twice a week has kept me plenty busy.

As I said in my last post my time as the official head coach at EP is up. I am still acting as a "volunteer" and showing up twice a week to help get Coach Swain acquainted with all the boys and show him how to run the day to day operations. To be honest I really fear that there will be a serious lack of motivation from the majority of this group now that I am not in their face everyday, but we all know that it is not the coaches job to show up at houses and drag kids out of bed. It is to motivate and coach the ones who want to be there. My suggestion to Coach Swain is to be more of a disiplinarian than I was and get rid of the kids I should have 2 years ago. Ill get off my soapbox as there are still a lot of good kids on the team who want to show up everyday and work hard.

Peoria played host to the 37th annual Steamboat Classic on June 19th. My official job title for the event is assistant race director but I wear many hats during the week. Playing host to Steamboat friends, setting up the finish/starting line, media coverage are just a few things that kept me busy. The race turned out to be one of the best weve had in the last few years with Shadrack Kosgei outkicking Peter Kamais to run 17:36 and Edna Kiplagat cracking 20 min for the womens title for the four mile race. I also got a chance to catch up with my old buddy Tom Bedford aka SOD (Son of Dave Bedford) which kept me out late for 5 nights in straight ; )

One of my parting gifts to the Peoria hs running community was putting on an 8 week summer running clinic. There are a lot of talented kids whom ive watched over the past few years that continue to struggle with injuries. Most of these were due to poor form and lack of strength. So I decided to put on a clinic with a good friend of mine, Dr Jay Benningfield, which is aimed at getting kids in the gym for a serious strength program where they learn more about their bodies. We go Monday and Wed mornings from 6-9 incorporating 75 minutes in the gym and then heading out to the soccer field for form drills and barefoot running. After that they are on their own for a run which most do together. I try to stay away that part as not to step on other coaches toes. Here is a link to a really nice article that the local newspaper did on the camp.

It has actually been nice to get back to traveling again. After jetsetting around the world for 8 years I was really tired of it. But since moving back to Peoria I havent left but a few times in the last 3 years. At the beginning of June I headed out to Eugene OR to watch the NCAA Championships and had a lot of good conversations with coaches and athletes selling the program. To be honest I really felt nervous about coaching a group of professionals because I felt that I had fogotten everything I learned over the 8 years I was a pro. On top of that coaching hs runners just broke my confidence down to nothing! But getting out of town and back in the running circle brought everything back in no time. I also traveled over to Des Moines for the USA national meet to do some recruiting as well. Most of my "recruiting" involves me explaining everything we are offering and what my goals for the group and what my training philosophies are. Everything sounds good to people but there is that inevitable question...who else would be coming? I have a couple of commitments so far but am going to wait to make an official announcement next month. I will say that there will be some very talented people making the trek to Hanover NH in September. Im still working hard to get a few more athletes who are waiting to make a decision till they get back from Europe later this month before they make a life altering move.

There it is folks. I will be putting out an announcement about who is officially committed to the new ITA program in the next 4 weeks. I want to wait mainly because I am hoping for a few other maybe's to say yes so I dont have to do multiple updates. As for the next month I am home all day playing nurse for my girlfriend/roommate, Ms. Bekah Aavang, who is 4 weeks non weightbearing from her peri acitabular osteotomy surgery! She is also making the big move with me to Hanover in 6 weeks time so I will be doing all the packing and moving on my own inbetween carrying her from the couch to the bathroom ; ) All the best to everyone. tb

Final Season Coming to an End

2010-05-24T04:53:00.000-07:00

Well folks, my chapter as a track and cross country coach at EP is coming to a close. I cannot believe how quickly my time here has passed. When I first came aboard 4 years ago, my only objective was to help get the boys cross country program headed in "A" direction. But in true Tim Broe fashion, I ended up being the head boys cross coach and the assistant track coach for both boys and girls distance. It has definately been a lot more work than I anticipated but it has also been a truly rewarding experience that I will never forget. Seeing kids like Jacob VanGunten break 5 minutes, watching an unlikely group of seniors win a conference 4x800, coaching a freshman Keving Eades to a 15:45 and a state birth are all memories that will stick with me forever. At the end of the day it really had nothing at all to do with getting faster, but rather getting a group of young people off their couches and getting them excited about the sport of running. I think I can safely say Mission Accomplished!

I haven't been on here for a couple of weeks and there is a lot to report. The boys had their conference meet almost two weeks ago and finished up their season Friday night with the state qualifying sectional meet. Although we did not have any big PRs or gold medals, I feel like this group has turned a corner...emotionally speaking. Im not sure if it was the abrupt departure of senior Hugh Gill, the reality that most of them are going to be seniors themselves, or that the reality that I am leaving is finally setting in. There has been a lot of talk about how much people are going to run this summer and I really hope they stick with that plan. A real bonus for me has been that we have found an more than suitable replacement. Will Swain, a former D3 All-American while at North Central College just accepted a physics position as well as the head cross postion earlier last week. That is a big relief to know that everything I have worked so hard to do will not just fall apart when I leave. Will is a heck of a nice guy who is young and passionate about he sport and will be a great fit at EP.

On the flip side the Lady Raiders have had an awsome finish to their season after what I would consider a rocky start. They had some really big performances at their conference and sectional meets over the last three weeks highlighted by Cassie Lohmeier and Emma Preston bringing home state medals! To say that I am going to miss coaching these young ladies would be a major understatement. They have been so enjoyable to work with on a daily basis. No back talk, hard work and a willingness to do whatever is asked of them to get better is what keeps coaches coming back season after season.

So here are my last shout outs as a track and cross coach at EP:

Kevin Eades - Gave everything he had despite knowing he was not at his best and also having what I beleive is a tibial stress fracture to finish 5th at the conference 3200. Not to worry folks, Kevin has a lot more in store for you all ; )

Alec Gonzalez - ran a pr of 4:45 in the 1600 at the sectional meet

Alec Cortes - finally dug deep and ran hard for two full laps to hand off tied with the leaders at the conference meet in a 2:05

Cody Margetis - taking a leadership roll all season with his relay teams and running a huge season best of 53 in the 400

Evan Jenkins - despite a 3rd stress fracture in as many years still showing up everyday to help me in any way he could, swimming at 5 am every morning and biking every afternoon shows the kind of dedication and determination that very few possess

Brant Watson - just wanted to give him another thank you for being such a great leader and roll model for every kid on this team. He also finished up his career running a respectable 11:00

Gage VanOrder - finally decided to run through discomfort in the 800 and run 2:10 at sectionals. He also made a race at the frosh conference meet just getting beat at the line in the 800 as well

Jacob VanGunten - what can I say about this kid that I havent already. He quietly shows up every single day with a positive attitude and does everything I ask him. His willingness to shut his mouth and open his ears along with his drive and ability to dig deep everytime he races will take him a long way in life. Jacob finally got his sub 5 mile finishing 4th at the conference meet in the frosh 1600!

Zach Sells - I think I can finally say that Zach is going to be a runner. He resisted for 9 months, but given that determined look I saw on his face when he almost won the Tim Broe F/S Invite 400 and the smile on his face when I told him he ran 61 in the 400 proves that anybody can do this if they just give a little effort on a consistent basis ; )

Austin McGraugh - This team player is going to be a real leader someday. I have never coach a kid that is so positive and is willing to do anything I ask of him all while he wears that big goofy grin on his face! Unfortunately Austin had a season ending injury a week before conference while high jumping but he has informed me that he intends to run 750 miles this summer!

Cassie Lohmeier - What can I say about this kid...she is one of the special ones. At the conference meet she ran a school record 2:17.56 in the 800 and followed that up with a win in the 1600. At sectinals she comfortably won the 3200 and came back to finish 3rd in the 800. The state meet did not go as well as we would have liked but she ran tough and finally got that medal shes been chasing for the last 4 years finishing 7th in the 3200

Ashley Schmitt - What a little fighter. Watching her teammates run 217 like its nothing only motivates her to work that much harder. She didnt miss one practice since Ive been here and it finally paid off at sectionals when she finished 4th in a 30 sec pr of 11:45, which also qualified her for the state track meet! She got some invaluable experience and ran a respectable 6th place in her heat down at the state meet over the weekend

Emma Preston - All I can say is that Emma is a thoroughbred. When she figures out what she really wants out of all this she is going to be a really dangerous runner. Emma finally ran like she was capable at the sectional meet when she pulled up on the 2 time state 800 meter champ at the sectional meet with 50 meters to go. And although she didnt win, she did figure out that she is capable of running witht the best in the state. Oh yeah and she ran a school record 2:15.97 to boot! She broke her own record in the heats at the state meet running 2:15.55 finishing 2nd and qualify for the fianls. In the finals she over came a mental lapse from 600 to 700 meters and picked herself up to finish a remarkable 4th place!

Hannah Sheppard - She finally gave in and admitted that she is an 800 meter runner after she was nipped at the line at the conference meet to miss winning by .2 seconds. She ran a big pr of 2:34 along the was and has decided there is a place for her in this sport. she wants to be on the bus to Charleston next year and is going to do whatever it takes to get there

Heather Jones - Ran a huge pr at conference in the 4x800 of 2:35 and put us in the lead after the 2nd leg. She came back and won the frosh mile running 1st from wire to wire with a pb of 5:51 to boot!

If you cannot tell I am extremely proud of everyone of these kids. They have worked harder than 99% of all their classmates and have found out what it means to be dedicated. I never thought I would get so choked up about watching a girl run 1145 or a boy run sub 5 but it just goes to show that winning is a very small part of what sport is all about. I hope the lessons and th memories that these athletes have learned with me stick with them for the rest of their lives. Who knows, I may be coaching future track coaches themselves!

On a very different note, I got up to New Hampshire to finally see the new place for myself. Totally awsome! Thats the only way to put it. I definately have my work cut out for me over the next few years but I know it will get accomplished as I have very determined and talented people supporting me. I am going to save my plans and updates for the new project for a later post, but needless to say there are some big things happening with ITA in the very near future!

Thanks for reading and as always Go Raiders!

Changes in Latitude!

2010-04-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

For those of you who do not follow ITA news, there is a big announcement up on the site as of last week. I will be making the big move to ITA's new headquarters in Lyme, New Hampshire later this summer to begin building our very own post collegiate training group! This will be a one of a kind program for athletes who wish to continue chasing their dreams of becoming top distance runners in the US. ITA will provide access to training facilities, a housing allowance, a living stipend, equipment, health insurance and competition-related expenses to all qualifying athletes. In turn the athletes will be required to participate in community programs aimed at exposing youth to the benefits of physical exercise through track and field. Not a bad deal if you ask me ; )

Needless to say there is a lot to do from my end over the next 4 months before even moving up to NH. First and foremost is beginning the recruitement of Americas top young talent. I have already gotten a lot of emails and phone calls from interested parties and I fear this may be even bigger than we hoped for! Our goal is to have 12-16 athletes by this time next year and I am determined to fill those slots with 12-16 finalists at the 2012 Olympic Trails. I am really geeked to get up there in a few weeks so I can get a lay of the land and will be better equiped to pain a picture for prospective athletes.

That is a really brief overview of what is going on at ITA and I will keep everybody posted on our progress thoughout the summer. In the mean time, lets get back to the business. As you probably have guessed the East Peoria kids have been bummin a little since I broke the news a few weeks ago. There were a lot of tears and sad faces but in the end I believe they understand. My goal when I took over this program was to instill a passion for running in every kid I coached. To get them motivated to get out of bed every Saturday morning and accomplish something they may never have dreamed was possible. To have a priority in their lives other than winning the online Halo tourney. I believe my mission was accomplished; all the school records, conference titles, state qualifiers, and countless prs was just a bonus.

So here are my shout outs from the last week. There are quite a few as everybody has really turned it on over the last two meets. We have finally started to do some "speed work" and they are finally feeling fast and rested. Unfortunately we had our big invite cancelled Friday night so everybody will have to wait till this Friday to get out and step on in!

Cassie Lohmeier- suprised even me by running a solo 11:16 3200 last week

Ashley Schmitt - ran a prs of 5:38 and 12:15 in the 1600 and 3200 respectively

Hannah Sheppard - learned how to race a full two laps to a pr of 2:37 in the 800

Heather Jones - finally cracking the 6 minute barrier in the 1600 at 5:56

Emma Preston - just missed the school record in the 800 running 2:18.9 solo

Gage VanOrder - finally decided to try and dropped big time in the 800 and 400 2:13 and 56

Jacob VanGunten - just missed breaking the 5 min mile barrier running 5:00.1!

Zach Sells - dropped 8 seconds in the 400 to run 62 and almost won his heat of the Tim Broe f/s Invite?! How does that happen ; )

Austin McGraugh - jumped 5'5" in his first HJ comp ever...and I didnt even know the kid could jump!

Kevin Eades - cruised to a win the 3200 at the TB Invite

As you can see the Varsity guys are missing up there but most of them have been tired and I started the tapering process a week later from the girls. They are ready to pop big times but unfortunately Mother Nature decided to unleash on us last Friday at the Normal Invite. I will keep you all informed as best as possible and as always Happy Running and GO RAIDERS!

p.s. Here is an official link to the new program

http://www.in-the-arena.org/Recent.aspx

Outdoors Has Begun

2010-04-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

It is officially spring and I cannot remember ever having as nice of weather as we have had here in Central IL over the last 3 weeks. Considering it was one of the coldest winters in history, the warm weather is well deserved. It is amazing how the weather can affect attitudes as well. A few weeks ago everybody seemed to be tired and have pains all over, but the minute the mercury started reading 65 we looked like a new team!

Last week the team started out at the Shipley Invite in Moline IL. This meet always provides really steep competition and this year was no different. In fact, we only had one medal winner out of the whole guys team and a handful from the girls. I am not sure why we ran so poorly. My only thought is that it was the first time inn 4 years that they had to race without coach Broe staning at the 150 mark yelling every lap as I was in Ann Arbor MI for a wedding. It could also have been that we were on spring break all that week and I am sure they wore themselves out tp'ing me a few nights before in retaliation to the workouts I put them through during their week off! None-the-less we came back nicely last Tuesday for our first conference triangular meet and got a bunch of wins and good performances.

So here are Coach Broe's shout outs for the week:

Kevin Eades won his first open 800 ever in 2:09
Gage VanOrder medaled in the 3200 at the Moline Invite
Jacob VanGunten cut 5 seconds off his pb in the 1600 running 5:10
Cody Margetis continues to impress getting nipped at the line but running 54.4 in the 400
Cassie Lohmeier returned from missing all last season to win her first 1600 in 2 years in 5:28
Ashely Schmitt split a pb for her first 800 of the season running 2:33
Hannah Sheppard braved the 300 hurdles for the first time running 55

We are still running a little tired, and that is why my list is so short this blog. I have decided to continue with hills on Monday and that is leaving people with heavy legs and slower than expected times. But this week will be our last really hard Monday so I hope that will refresh them and we will see the performances improve. Like I have stated in the past, I dont like racing tired, but sometimes you have to look at the big picture.

Attached are some photos I took from our workout we had Saturday. It is the second to last weekend we have off before we get into weekend invites so I took full advantage of the weather and ran them into the ground. The fresh/soph and mid distance guys did 3200 tempo followed up by 6x300 hard. Gill, Eades and EP alumn Shane Leiby did their first Michigan in a few years and as you can see from the pics they were praying to God by the end!

We have a duel/tri meets for the next 3 Tuesdays as well as the Tim Broe Invite this Thur and the Normal Invite next Friday. Both are really big meets. I will get and update on here after that and hopefully my list of shoutouts will be a page long!

Happy Running and Go Raiders!

Things Are Heating UP!

2010-03-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

As spring begins to heat things up, so does the EPCHS track squad. Last weekend we competed at the Galesburg Invite with a few Raiders winning medals and several others running big pr's. I was really encouraged by the way we ran given the workload we had the week prior. Monday was our third week of hills and sprints, Tuesday 1ks/300s, and Thursday 3 miles tempo followed by 200s. And although we are still missing some of our top athletes to little injuries and suspensions, the group that raced Saturday brought it.

So here are my shout outs for the week

1. Kevin Eades ran a big pr and qualified for the state indoor meet by .29 seconds running 9:51.71, good for a 3rd place finish

2. Cody Margetis continues to shine running 54.7 for a 2 second pb, capturing 6th place

3. Jacob VanGunten raced through sore shins to run 5:11 for a 4 second pr

4. Heather Jones won her first race as a high schooler, winning her heat of the 800 in a pb of 2:44

5. Ashley Schmitt raced a tough mile to finish 5th in another pb of 5:40

6. Emma Preston ran the easiest looking 5:11 in the mile Ive ever seen, crushing the school record by 13 seconds and placing her 3rd in the state! Watch out folks, this girl is going to be a serious stud!

Kevin competed yesterday at our unofficial "State" Indoor Meet, missing a medal by .02 and finishing in dissappointing 9th place, but running a pr of 9:49 along the way (dissappointing by his standards). I am not a big fan of these indoor meets, but we need to learn how to race with a group vs 1 or 2 other guys. Kevin put himself in contention for 3rd which was our goal, but he just looked a little flat the last 1k. Im not sure if it had to do with another hard week of practice, the surging he did every lap or being out in 4:46, but I thought he did a great job and it was a great experience for him to build off of as we prepare for that state outdoor meet. Unfortunately Emma Preston strained her plantar en route to her school record so we decided to sit the weekend out and make sure this thing is gone before we head into the outdoor season.

School is out for spring break next week so we are going to take full advantage of the 70 degree forcast ; ) We head to the Moline Invite this Saturday for our first outdoor meet and then its pretty much racing 3 times a week. I wish everybody a Happy Easter and I will post again in a few weeks, hopefully with a whole book of shout outs! Go Raiders!

Fighting the Injury Bug

2010-03-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

As you have probably discerned from the title, we have been riding that fine edge of pain and injury. Unfortunately injury won out in most our cases. It is so difficult to keep a group of teenage kids healthy while trying to train them right on the icy roads of the midwest. But every year when the snow melts and we can get on the track and use the ice tub, it seems those winter-long injuries just seem to mysteriously dissappear. Such was the case for roughly half the team.

I seem to really stress over these injuries, not only becuase I want a team at full strength, but also because I feel responsible for the welfare of every kid I train. Lack of health care, poor shoes, unwillingness to ice and take anti inflamatories also doesnt help my cause. But Thursday was a real breakthrough day for the Raiders. Cassie Lohmeiers it band and achilles hasnt hurt for a week. Autumn Andrews foot (peroneus), which has been hurting since winter 2009, is responding well to orthotics and my special new wrap job. Jacob VanGunten finally got rid of his underarmor shoes : ( and two days later didnt feel a bit of pain in his shin for the first time in 8 weeks. Alec Gonzalez ran his first workout after trying to manage a achilles problem the last 8 weeks. Emma Prestons plantar has quit hurting after staining it at the indoor meet a few weeks ago (a special tape job as well : ) Those have been the big ones, but it just seemed everybody on the team, with the exception of Kevin Eades, has had to miss some time for one reason of another.

We will be racing the second, and last, indoor meet of the season this weekend. And being that I dont have any pics or much to report on I am going to share with everyone our workout log for the last 2 weeks. We are starting to transition from tempos and fartleks into race specific track work with hills and sprint drills in there as well. In hindsight, I should have done this a long time ago, but here it is:

Mon March 1 8x hills, 6x200
Tues Mar 2 5x1200 tempo intervals
Wed Mar 3 30 easy, 6x150, weight circuit
Thur Mar 4 4 mile tempo
Fri Mar 5 30 easy, 4x150, plyos
Sat Mar 6 60-80 min finishing last 30 min at "marathon" pace
Sun Mar 7 off or 30 easy
Mon Mar 8 8xhills, 6x200
Tues Mar 9 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 1200, 800, 400 tempo
Wed Mar 10 30 easy, 6x150, weight circuit
Thur Mar 11 4xmile tempo (Eades totally killed this one 5:30, 5:35, 5:18, 5:10!)
Fri Mar 12 30 easy, plyos
Sat Mar 13 60-75 easy
Sun Mar 14 off or 30

This week:

Mon Mar 15 8xhills, 10x100 sprint drills
Tues Mar 16 4x1000 (at 2 mile pace)
Wed Mar 17 30 easy, weights and plyos
Thur Mar 18 fartlek (6x2 min steady with 3 min float inbetween) or 4x800 tempo 6x200 (Im not quite sure yet)
Fri Mar 19 25 easy, 6x100 strides
Sat Mar 20 Race Day!

So there you have it folks, there is the secret workout schedule of the EP Raiders! It may look like a lot to some (and may look like a joke to others) but everything we do is very controlled. Tuesday will be the first day that I get in their faces a little bit. I will post results and pics from the meet this weekend. I also have a big bit of personal news for everyone, but I am going to wait another week to make the announcement. Safe and happy running and GO RAIDERS!

First Race of the Season

2010-03-01T11:26:00.001-08:00

The Raider Track Team raced our first indoor meet of the year and things went really well for those who trained all winter.
I wasnt expecting to much as we have not done anything but tempo runs, tempo intervals, long runs and strides over the last 3 months. They did not have a 3200 at this meet so most everybody got thrown into the 1600.

In the fresh-soph, conference xc champ Jacob VanGunten once again suprised everybody by running 5:15 for his first mile ever! I as hoping to see him run around 5:25 but he got in with a good group of runners and just competed. What was really funny was him coming to me and saying in his quiet bashful way "ummmk Coach, how do you run a mile?"! I said, just like you did xc, pin you ears back and run like heck! Freshman Austin McGraugh just started back with us after wrestling all winter and was still nursing a sore shin which has a stress fracture last fall. In typical Austin fashion, he went hard to the lead and did all the work for everybody for the first half of the race. Needless to say he paid the price. Whats a coach to do with an attitude like that? ; )

In the girls mile Ashley Schmitt and Emma Preston both race state indoor qualifying times of 5:43 and 5:26 respectively. That was a personal best by 2 seconds for Ashley which tells me she is going to make some huge jumps this track season. Preston, who is a sophmore, did not do track last spring so this is the first track race for her in almost 2 years. Despite that she was out with 2 state medalists from last year in 72 seconds...ouch! We had to back off as she was not quit prepared for that pace, but she rebounded nicely and had a blazing last 200 to finish second and almost catch the leader. Needless to say, she has a lot of talent.

Kevin Eades was set up for a perfect early season mile, following a state champ from last years 800 and a runner up from the 1600 last season. He settled into third and just hung on for the ride. After going throught the 800 in a fairly pedestrian pace of 2:20 the race started to heat up. With a lap to go Dunlap star John Crain made a hard move and Kevin tried his best to jump on it. He hung onto 2nd till the last 5 meters when he was nipped at the finish for a third place finish and a 1o second pr of 4:38! That puts him just a second off state qualifying but our focus wil be the two mile which we will try at our next meet in a few weeks.

Others that ran well were Cody Margetis (2:15), Evan Jenkins (2:25) and Hannah Sheppard (70). We have one more week of tempo and base work before we move into our 2 mile race pace workouts along with hills. I have been really pleased with the way we have responded to the weights and plyos that I have added this year. Hopefully that will make the difference when it counts. A few more weeks of long runs, one more indoor meet and we will be getting ready for state indoors and the outdoor season. Weather is supposed to finally warm up into the 40s so hopefully we can finally get some work done! Thanks for reading and I will keep everyone posted as the season progresses. Go Raiders

Winter Training

2010-02-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

Well folks, we are one week away from our first indoor meet of 2010 and I'm pretty stoked. Almost everybody on the team healthy and we have had a really good last two weeks of training. Although it has been pretty cold and snowy, we have made the best of it.

Last Monday was our first track workout of 6x800 at tempo pace with 60-90 sec rest. We did a bit of an experiment taking everybodys heart rate after each interval and recording it. This way I was able to go back at the end and see how hard we were working. I threw a heart rate monitor Kevin Eades, Ashely Scmitt and Evan Jenkins and told them to keep their heart rate over 165 and under 170. Eades looked like a machine averaging 2:38 for 7 intervals, and Evan and Ashley were out way to quick on the first two but still kept it around 3:15. It will be interesting to see what they run over a mile Friday night as I am curious how close they will be to their training time predictions in Jack Daniels training book.

We also did our first hill specific workout of the season Thursday only because everything was covered in snow and ice and I couldnt find anywhere else to run. I get so nervous doing these hills because they seem to cause a lot of knee and achilles problems but still believe they are a really important part of any runners training. Friday we got nasty on Coach Broes new plyometric routine. This was the third week of doing it and I have let a lot slide giving them a chance to learn the exercises but I got in their faces a little Friday. There were a lot of groans and sweaty shirts but I think they really like the plyo work.

Yesterday was a long run from my place. It is the same 10.2 mile loop that we did over the summer, finishing up the half mile long hill that my house sits upon! Most arent quit ready for 1o miles so they got dropped at the 2 mile mark, but Eades and Gill did the whole thing plus two miles and used it as a long "sub tempo" run averaging 6:30 pace! This was the longest run for all 3 new girls I have out and I was a little worried it would scare them away but they seemed to really enjoy just getting out and doing a long run. Marley Brimberry has been dealing with bad shin splints so she was my camera girl who stood on top of the hill to get snapshots of them suffering for me ; )

Thats all I got for you now. I am headed of to try to get some more of the ice off lane 1 so we can get some 200s in tomorrow. I also included a picture of the track from Thursday where I made them shovel lane 1 all the way around for me...thats dedication!

A New Routine

2010-01-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

Well folks, Im gunna give this post another try. I wrote a nice one two weeks ago only to lose it to cyberspace. Being that I dont have much to report on the training/racing front, I would share with everyone what I have planned for the next 2 months of training.

As I have previously stated several times before, I am really lucky to have a very talented group of tracksters. In fact, barring any injury problems, we will be right in the hunt for a state title in the girls 4x800 this year. There are a couple new girls out that skipped track their freshman year that will give us an advatage depth wise. I also believe that Kevin Eades has the potential to be a medalist in the 3200 meters this season. Hugh Gill looks forward to redeeming himself in the 1600 after missing a medal by one place last spring. Along with all that, we have several other kids who have potential to score at the conference meet. With that being said I feel a real obligation to do everything possible to have them ready for that moment.

In the past I have been fairly conservative with their training duration and intensity. I have tried to focus on listening to their bodies and running how they feel...they take it to literally. So I have set paces for every run even on easy days. This especially applies to the long tempo runs that I do every Monday. Always worrying about boredom and burnout, we used to bounce around from week to week with our tempo run. I have now picked just one course that we are going to do stick with for the next 6 weeks. This makes them more comfortable because they will know the course so well and they can see the improvements from week to week.

The big change on Tuesdays is the addition of a weight circuit routine. I believe that a big reason we have been having so many injury problems is the lack of muscular strength along with weak attatchments and ligaments. In the past I just gave them the exercises and told them to do it on their own. This typically resulted in a lot of standing around and going through the motions. Not only can I now stand over them and yell, but it gets their heart rate up and ads another degree of difficulty.

Wednesdays now have a morning run (school doesnt start till 9 so they will live) added to it which allows me to still get the mileage but helps reduce risk of injury by breaking up the run. We have also gone back to doing running form drills in the gym which I feel is really important for young athletes. Although it is maddening trying to teach it to a rowdy group, they few that listen will see big benefits in their form and economy. Wednesdays also finish with 150's on the track that I shovel once a week!

Thursdays are something I have done in the past, but not as consistent as I will do this season. Tempo intervals are a big part of my program, but I have always tried to do it out on the roads and gone off heart rate and effort. I stayed away from the track in fear of the kids hating it and getting really bored....but tough crap! For example: 6x800, 5x1k, 4x1200 with 60-90 seconds active recovery.

Fridays are probably the biggest change to the program. Along with doing our new dynamic and movent prep warm ups every day, we have also added a plyometric circuit routine to the week. I have always wanted to try throwing plyos into the training mix, but never felt comfortable coaching them as I have a limited amount of experience with it. So this is going to be an experiment for all of us. The way I have set it up, we will do 10 stations with 3 different exercises at each station, 40 seconds on/20 sec rest. That gives us 30 minutes of a pretty intense routine of eplosive exercises with several core exercises sprinkled in. This way I can get rid of the boring old core routing that I have done for the last 3 years.

Saturdays stay at a long run finishing in marathon type pace and Sundays being off or short and easy. Thats it folks. We are going to stick with this till April 1, then I have no idea what I will do! If anybody has any suggestions, let me know ; ) Our first indoor meet is two weeks from Friday so I will get those posted as soon as I can.

Go Raiders!

A New Year

2010-01-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year Everyone! I dont really have a whole lot to write about this time around so I thought I would give a 2009 recap and a prelude to 2010.

Here is a brief breakdown of all the Raider accomplishments:

-The boys x/c team won their first team trophy at our home invite since its inception 20 years ago, finished runner up at the conference meet and had a hard fought 7th place finish at the state qualifying sectional meet

-The girls track team qualified their first relay team for the state meet in over 10 years, finishing 10 in the 4x800 and missing a podium finish by 1 place

-Hugh Gill made the finals and finished 10th at the state track meet, missing a medal by 1 place; he also qualified for his first state cross country meet this fall, finishing 83th

-Kevin Eades rebounded from an injured ridden track season to medal at every cross country meet this fall and finish with an all conference performance

-Alec Gonzalez suprised even me by running 16:05 and finishing top 20 at the sectional meet

-Brant Watson dropped almost a minute of his pr to run 16:42 and be the most consistent member of the raider x/c team

-Cody Margetis shocked the world over the spring, running 54 in the 400 and anchored the frosh 4x4 at the conference meet to a win; he also won his first x/c race ever at the flighted Jacksonville Invite

-Gage VanOrder broke 17 for the first time this fall for 3 miles

-Evan Jenkins found a new gear at the conference track meet, running a pr in the 800 of 2:12

-Jacob VanGunten won the conference frosh race in x/c, his first win ever and the third year in a row that a Raider won that race

-Anthony Taapken put in a big summer and knocked 3 minutes off his personal best in cross

-Emily Gustafson medaled in the 1600 at the state meet finishing 7th, and also anchored the 4x800 team which made the finals

-Cassie Lohmeier had a very dissappointing spring after injuring her knee and was forced to watch from the sidelines all season. She did learn the importance of cross training in the mean time and is now a best on the track, in the pool and on the bike! She also rebounded nicely to lead her team to a podium finish in cross country

-Ashley Schmitt ran 3rd leg in the 4x800 and a pbs of 2:34 and 5:42

-Autumn Andrews showed real heart and spirit leading off the 4x800 at the state meet and handing off in first along the way; all this after missing the whole season with a foot injury!

-Rachel Innes made me nuts all season but earned her keep running a suprising leg of 2:28 at the state meet!

I expect big things from my guys and gals this spring. We have a lot of talent that is one year older, one year more mature (realtively speaking) and more motivated than ever to get all of their butts to the state meet and on that podium. I intend to work them like they've never been worked before this winter with my revamped core and plyo program! Cross your fingers that we all stay healthy.

Well, on a personal note, I am looking forward to getting out to Lyme, NH to check out the new facilities that ITA is in the process of acquiring. I'm crossing my fingers that ITA can find a spot for me to help out there this summer on their new campus!

tb

-

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-20T02:19:00.000-08:00

Well folks, this post should be fairly brief as nothing exciting has happened in my life over the last month. As you already know cross country has finished up for the season and we are already into full indoor track training mode.

There has actually been a bit of drama the last few weeks. Alec Gonzalez, who was the number 1 wrestler in the state, decided to call it a career and just focus on running. There were a lot of people upset and felt that I had a hand in this, but the kid was just sick of training i a sweaty gym and having to lose weight he doesnt have to spare every week. Stud soph Emma Preston, who did not run track last year, decided to give up soccer to focus on her running as well. Being that she is one of the best athletes in the school also left a few coaches salty with yours truly. What can I say, I have done my job! These kids just wanna run!

Anyhow, according to silly IHSA rules, coaches are not allowed to meet with or train athletes when they are not in season so I have been stress free for over a month ; ) Actually the really dedicated group has gotten together and ran after school everyday since cross ended. I will have an exceptionally talented group of girls this year that should be right in the mix to win the state 4x800 relay. And with Hugh Gill and Kevin Eades in the mix we could have a very enjoyable spring track season.

Thats all I got for now. I recently got a membership to the new local fitness center and I have been embarrasing myself in the pool as of late. We will resume training with the high school after the new year so I will give everyone an update when we get back at it. Have a Merry Christmas and safe New Year!

Another Season Bites the Dust

2009-11-23T03:55:00.000-08:00

Well, its another end to a great season. Last I updated everyone, we were 3rd at our Regional meet and preparing for the state qualifying Sectional meet. Record rains fell the whole weekleading into it, which turned our course into a muddy pool of slop. This, I believe, was going to be a big handicap for us as younger runners who dont do a lot of mileage tend to struggle when the course is not dry. In fact I have only run on a sloppier course once in my life which was at World Cross back in 2002.

Anyhow my fears proved to be true as Hugh Gill, the only big, strong, high-mileage kid in the group ran like a stud and most everyone else struggled home to a respectable 7th place team finish. Hugh finished 8th over all, which booked him a ticket to the state meet. Keving Eades, who I felt had a real chance of medaling at the state meet could never get it going in the mud and suffered home in 18th, missing the state meet by one place :( Alec Gonzalez competed like a true champion, running the race of his life to finish a respectable 23. He beat some very good runners in doing so as we definately have the toughest sectional in the state of Illinois. My other honorable mention was senior Brant Watson who has been clutch for us all season long. I love to brag on Brant as he came out as a pudgy freshman with a single goal of losing a little weight. But after doing everything I have asked of him for the last 4 years he ended up being a key contributor to this team. A coach could not ask for a better young man to work with and his leadership on this team will be deeply missed.

Preparation for the state meet was pretty easy for Hugh Gill. We did a mile time trial early in the week, hitting 4:39, and that was it for us. The conditions could not have been any different from the sectional course at Detwiller Park. Dry as a bone and unseasonably warm temps of 70 plus proved to be tough for many of the athletes, as they were dropping like flies all day. I felt like Hugh was going to have to have a really good race to crack into top 25 for an all state spot. Our game plan was really simple, get out hard and hang on for dear life! The first part went to plan just great, but unfortunately Hugh could not hang onto the early pace and faded to a dissappointing 83rd. All in all not a bad season, as it was his first time racing at State and it will be another good experience for him to draw upon as he prepares for his final track season.

That is the jist of it from this end. I cannot lie and say I was not dissappointed that we did not qualify as a team. These boys put in a lot of work over the last 6 months and were really focused on achieving their goal. But it proved to be even more difficult than I expected. There is a lot of talent in this state and a lot of good coaches to boot. One thing I think did happen though was make the boys realize that if they ever want to accomplish what they want as a team they are really going to have to gell together on the off season and put some real mileage in. Im talking about turing into real running geeks! Thats what it is going to take, but I think they have the moxy that it takes!

As soon as I can figure this thing out I will be attatching a video of the season that Jacob VanGuntens father so graciously put together for our awards banquet. Enjoy and I will update you all again after we reorganize and begin preparing for our winter training!

Championship Season

2009-10-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Raider cross country team is now in the heart of our championship series and if we don't put it together as a team Saturday at the Sectional meet we will be the odd man out. We placed 3rd at the conference meet last weekend and 3rd again yesterday at the IHSA Regional meet, both held at fabled Detwiller Park right here in Peoria.

Conference was actually a bit of a dissappointment after all the hype coming in. There were 6 teams that had a legitimate shot at winning but at the end of the day Metamora pulled it out once again. After what I felt like was a light week, the boys all felt sluggish and tired after the first mile and they never really got themselves into it. One high note was freshman Jacob VanGunten winning the frosh race by a nose to keep our streak of 3 in a row alive! It was awsome to see a young man who has never won a race in his life stick his nose in it and compete like he did. Kevin Eades made a push to run with two all state runners but in the end he just couldnt get it going and faded to a dissappointing 5th. He and Hugh Gill did hang on though for All Conference finishes though.

Regionals was just a formality as 5 teams qualify out of the 8 there. We used it as an opportunity to run together as a group for the first mile. Aside from one dissappointment the boys ran pretty well on a cold and windy day. Next weeks sectionals will prove to be a real test as there are 8 teams that have a real legitimate chance to qualify in those top 5 spots. It will take a big effort from every guy but I have faith that this group will go out and set a standard for teams to come. Eades and Gill should both be top 15 and Gonzalez top 25. The real key will be if Alex Cortes can finally race like he works out. If he can crack top 45 and Brant Watson can be top 70 we will be on our way to state.

Conference results: http://www.ivs.org/Results/2009/Mid%20Illini/boyvar_ind.txt

Regional results: http://go.ihsa.org/reports/ccb69794.htm

I will keep you all posted after the race and if you are just dying to know results before I write you can find them on www.ihsa.org and go under the cross country tab. Go to results, 2A, East Peoria Sectionals. Until then, Go Raiders!

Trophy Time!

2009-09-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

The Raider cross country team brought home some team hardware from our home meet for the first time since its inception in 1990! We placed 3rd to two of the best teams in the state and more importantly beat all the teams that our main competition in the state qualifying sectionals. It is a big advantage to be hosting the sectional meet and this was the first meet this year where I asked the boys to really lay it all out there. They performed like the champions that I knew they were. I believe we had 16 out of 17 prs. My new posts are gunna change a little from the past. I will just post each kid witht their time, place and a few notes on how they raced. At the bottom will be pictures from the meet that the parents have been nice enough to take for me. We will race again next weekend at a smaller flighted race where I hope to bring home our first team title in over 30 years! Enjoy and Go Raiders

Kevin Eades 15:31 4th; 10 sec pr; showed that he is capable of being top 15 in the state
Hugh Gill 15:55 13th; 15 sec pr; great showing for first race year, expect big things
Alec Gonzalez 16:06 23rd; 10 sec pr; competes better than any athlete ive ever coached
Brant Watson 16:51 44th; 35 sec pr; huge race; welcome to sub 17!
Gage VanOrder 16:58 50th; 15 sec pr; finally getting out quick and competing
Cody Margetis 17:01 52nd; 10 sec pr; raced tough with pinched SI joint
Alec Cortes 17:13 64th; very off day, has gotta get out early and not fear the pain
Drew Thomas 17:26 75th; getting better after a long 9 month layoff
Austin McGraw 18:12 33rd f/s; 55 sec pr; out quick but held on well
Jacob VanGunten 18:18 35th f/s; 70 sec pr; raced smart for a huge pb
John Tillotson 19:34 151st; finally cracked 20 min
Shane Hubbard 19:35 60th f/s; finally cracked 20 min
Zach Sells 20:07 74th f/s; just missed sub 20 but learning that he can race
Mike Ginz 21:14 91th f/s; only second week on the team
Colton Killian 21:40 198th; learing how to work the middle of the race
Christian Hamilton 22:00 202nd; learning how to work the middle of the race
Anthony Taapken 22:34 206th; gotta learn how to push for 3 miles

Week 2

2009-09-18T11:09:00.001-07:00

The Raider cross country team is back in action, just completeing the second week of competition. Saturday September 5 was the Canton Invite, a smaller local invite and last weekend was the monster Woodruff Invite at storied Detwiller Park.

Canton was a great start for the Raiders, placing 2 on the medal stand in the Varsity race and one suprise medal in the frosh race with Austin McGraugh. Kevin Eades ran a courageous race to place 6th and Alec Gonzalez ran the race of the meet to place 8th. I was not counting on him running so fast this year and this could prove to be the real advantage that we needed to win the conference and advance to the state finals. Other notable varsity racers were Brant Watson, Gage VanOrder, and Cody Margetis who all ran PRs in the first meet of the year on a hilly course.

The Woodruff Invite is a huge meet with over 100 teams competing in 3 different classes. We are the middle one, AA, and we ran pretty well to finish 12th out of 32. That was with out team leader Hugh Gill who will be back in action next week at the EP Invite. Six out of seven kids ran PRs, Kevin Eades just off his as he was out a little too fast. He did hang on to finish 16 and medal, as did wonderkid Alec Gonzalez running 16:15 to run another huge personal best. Only top 7 are allowed to compete in the team race, but our other 8 runners talked me into letting them run the open and they soon found out why I was against it. The race started with over 850 competitors at 1 in the afternoon! They did have fun though being that they were never able to run fast enough to hurt cause there were too many people in their way ; )

We have the weekend off to prepare for our big home invite that will feature 7 of the top 10 teams in our sectional. Fortunately for us the sectional race is held at home which could be another small advantatge. The boys have been pretty fired up since the preseason rankings came up and didnt even give us a mention. I centaintly believe that we are a top 12 team in the state with Gill running, but we wil have to get out of a very tough sectional to do that.

That is all the exciting news to report from Central Illinios. Yesterday was probably one of the most inspiring coaching moments of my career. We had a real ****buster of a workout, 4 x (4x400) with 1 min recovery on reps and 3 min on sets. The workout was aimed at getting a fast rhythm in the legs so we did it on the track on a fairly hot day. The kids responded like champs (they love 400's for some reason). The teammanship is like nothing I have ever seen at EP. They were cheering each other on and doing chants at the start of each one. It gave me goosebumps to know that it has only taken me 3 years to get a real xc team together at EP!

I will make another update after our home meet next weekend, hopefully with lots more good news! GO RAIDERS

A New Season

2009-08-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the season has finally come to a close and in a dramatic one none-the-less. The girls closed the season with a 10th place finish at the state meet in the 4x800 and the boys finished on a high note with one state qualifier and a boat load of pr's.

On the girls side of things we qualified for the state meet in the 4x800 running a season best of 10:02 to finish second at the sectional meet. Emily Gustafson, who was sick at the time, then came back to win the 1600. Our time coming into the meet placed us 16th overall but I knew the girls had at least 10 seconds to drop once they got into the heat of competition, and they did just that. Freshman stud Autumn Andrews who was running only her third race of the year due to an on going foot injury lead of with a monster first leg of 2:21, handing off in the lead! Rookie Rachel Innes then held her ground running 2:29 and maintained our first position to hand off to the other sophmore Ashley Schmitt. Ashely ran for her life and kept the stick in the top seven, running her fastest leg of the year clocking 2:35. Veteran Emily Gustafson moved up 3 positions over the last lap to crush our season best running 9:49 and qualifying for the finals by 1 place!

The finals went as expected for the relay, other than Autumn Andrews running 2:21 to hand off in first place. Innes and Schmitt held on to tie their pbs from the day before and Emily Gustafson got the baton just a bit to far behind to get us back in medal contention. They did run another season best and the second fastest time in school history of 9:48. Although they were a little bummed that they missed a medal by one place, I think that they know in their hearts that they ran as good as they could have. Hopefully it will be motivation to train like crazy this summer ; )

Emily Gustafson came back off the relay to win her heat of the 1600, running 5:16. The final did not go quite as planned as she is still learning how to run a championship type mile. There was a lot of bumping and when the pace picked up at the 800 she never really responded. She still hung on for a 7th place finish which was good enough for her first All State medal!

On the boys side of things Hugh Gill was the suprise of the year. He ran a personal best of 4:28 to qualify for the state meet! We knew he was in sub 4:30 shape it was just a matter of being in the right race on the right day. Coming into the state meet he was seeded 20th out of 30 and top 12 make the finals. We drew heat 1 and the only advise I could give him was pin your ears back and run with the leaders, and he did just that. He finished 4th in his heat in a time of 4:29 to sneak into the finals with the last time! The finals went pretty much as planned and our plan was to stay in the back for 800 and then get into medal position at some point so we could at least say we went for it. Hugh managed to get into 8th place but with 300 to go two kids got around him and he ran a hard fought 10th place, one spot from the podium : ( But I believe it is a great way to finish off a hard earned season and build into the last summer of his high school career. More importantly it brings a new level of commitment to the team and there has been such a remarkable shift in attitude with this group over the last 9 months.

That is the short story long folks. I just finished up with a long week of helping make the Steamboat Classic a world class event. I havent been to bed before 1 am for the last week so I am looking forward to a few days of peace and quiet. I did a little running with the boys last week, their first real week of summer training. Im still grinding it out on the bike as well when I get mornings away from things. When I get results and stories from the race on practice Wednesday I will post them as I havent gotten a chance to talk to any of the boys. I did see that most of them ran really well, especially the ones that ran the 15k!

Go Raiders!

Championship Season Is Here!

2009-05-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since I last updated everybody. The distance boys are running prs every meet, most of my best female distance runners are hurt, I am back to running a bit, I helped put on a ultra for troubled troubled people and my truck was trashed on prom night!

First off, anybody that decides to run for 150 miles one a muddy 10 mile loop at 15 minute per mile pace has serious mental issues. Let me do the math for you, thats 50 hours of running...MENTAL! A friend fo mine puts on the McNaughtin Ultra so I decided to go out and help. It ended up raining over an inch the night of and all day during the first day. So needless to say it was an absolute nightmare. Fortunately nobody suffered any major injuries, just a lot of "my legs started cramping after the first 24 hours." MENTAL.

We have had qute a few meets over the last week and it would take an hour to update everybodys successes. Just a few shout outs. Freshman stud Kevin Eades has gotten his 2 mile time down to 10:20 and I see a sub 10 in his very near future. Hugh Gill has his 3200 time down to 10:05 and we are hoping for a sub 9:50 which will qualify him for the state meet. Sophmore goof Cody Margetis has found his niche running a huge split to win our fresh/soph meet running a 6 second pr of 56! Probably one of the highlights of the year. David Blackford (pictured below leading the chase pack for second) ran a big pr of 2:04 in the 800. Soph Alex Cortes got nipped at the Tim Broe F/S Invite for the win running 4:48. To make it short I now have 6 sub 5 minute milers and hopefully a 7th Friday night.

The girls has been a whole different story. Cassie Lohmeier has been battling IT band issues and is done for the year. Emily Gustafson is running well but has a serious calf problem and the conference meet is 48 hours away. Rachel Innes, the suprise of the year, has a strained lower back and is iffy for Thursday nights conference meet. On a positive, freshman stud Autumn Andrews' foot is healing and she ran a big pb Friday on 2:27 and 61. Ashley Schmitt also ran great last week, running a pb of 5:44.

The big story of the week though was me waking up to find my truck trashed the morning after Prom. After doing a little investigating, it appears the girls dates must have been really boring because they decided to pay me a visit. As if seran wrap and mushed bananas werent enough, they thought a bag of flower in a rain storm would be a nice way to cap the night off! After a little scalding, I did tell them that I am honored they were thinking of poor coach Broe on the biggest social night of their lives. Ah, high school girls ; )

Thats all I got for you now. I have gotten the runs up to 5-6 miles but the foot pain continues. We now officially in championship season so I will keep everybody posted on all our Raider success!

2009-04-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Hello again everybody. Sorry it took me a few days to get this out there, but Ive been busy moving and doing the Easter thing.

Last week was the beginning of the outdoor season at the Moline Invite and the kids did not dissappoint. We were short quite a few, but those that ran performed great. Although she was sick, Emily Gustafson (seen in photos) ran a season pr of 5:22 in the mile and a great lead-off leg of the 3rd place 4x800. She is finally starting to see the benefits of consistent longer runs over the last year. I am hoping to see her down under 5:10 by the end of the season. Cassie Lohmeier ran a 2:30 anchor leg of the 4x800 for her first race of the season. She is coming off an IT band injurt all winter, but is still capable of placing in the State Finals and helping our 4x800 team win a title. She also won a close 3200 Tuesday at our conference triangular meet. Suprise sophmore Rachel Innes also ran a great leg on the 4x800 (2:35) then coming back and placing second in her first outdoor 800 ever. She also ran a top conference time of 57 for her first 3oo hurdle race. More importantly, she stayed vertical for the whole race! Ashley Schmitt opened with a 2:40 leg of the relay and ran a pb in the mile of 5:50. And finally, Autumn Andrews opened her outdoor season with a 228 and 62 after a winter layoff with an ongoing foot problem.

The boys also ran great last week. Junior star Hugh Gill started his season off with a win in the 3200, running a big pb of 10:18. State qualifying is 9:49, which is what we are working towards. Keving Eades, state xc qualifier, got his first races of the year in after an injury as welll. He won his heat of the 3200 and the 1600. Freshman Cody Lacross ran a pr in the mile of 5:41 and ran 12:00 for his first 3200 ever. What is great about Cody is that he is the only kid out of 13 that voluntarily runs the 2 mile for me every meet!

That is all I really have to report on the track side of things. I am still at my 30 min a day and the foot pain is still lingering. Deep throbbing and aching would be another way to put it, but I am trying to be positive. Im headed back to see the Doc in a few weeks, but am assuming that I will get the old standard "Its gonna take a while to heal up". Im really looking forward fort the warm up this week so I can get back on the bike and start burning all my anxious energy.

We will be racing 3 times this week and twice next so I hope to have plenty of good news to report. Go Raiders!

Indoor State Meet

2009-03-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

The Lady Raider track team came one step closer to becoming a threat for a relay title Friday night at the Illinois State Indoor Championships. Coming in as the 4th seed in the 4x800, we ended finishing 12th against a very strong field. Senior stud Emily Gustafson gave a great lead off leg handing off in 3rd place. Rookie sophmore Rachel Innes ran a superb leg, holding 4th position and running a PB of 2:36. In her first track season Junior Marley Brimberry, filling in for an injured Autumn Andrews, was a little unnerved by the energy of the crowd and the stiff competition. The hard working sophmore Ashley Schmitt got the baton quit a bit out of the competition but still ran a PR leg of 2:43 to put us in 12th.

Emily Gustafson, seeded second, came back to finish 4th in the mile. After waiting around for a 3 hour delay, Emily got out great. Three laps into the race she got a little bump and didn't respond when the pace picked up. From there she fell back to 8th and trailed the leaders by 30 meters. But with 100 meters to go she found a gear shes never had before. With a freshman-like crazy big finish she battled back to fourth place, just missing third. Afterward she could read my body language and said "I cant believe how much I had left!" and I wont repeat my reply. Needless to say the consistent winter training is paying off and she needs to start learning how to race with all the new tools she has developed. She did run another school record of 5:22 and got a great feel for what it is like to race at the next level.

I am still putting away with my running. Just 15-20 minutes a day as the achey pain in my left big toe is giving me problems. My podiatrist, Dr. Grady, says it is still going to take some time to clear it all up as it was so full of scar tissue for so long.

We are headed west to the Moline Invite next Saturday for our first outdoor meet of the season. I am really looking forward to seeing how junior Hugh Gill and some of the others will run after a consistent stretch of winter training. Coming off a winter of IT band tendonitis, junior star Cassie Lohmeier will also make her 2009 track debut in the 3200. Freshman ace Autumn Andrews will also be back running after missing the state indoor meet with tendonitis in her foot.

Hopefully next time I write we will have banked a wholebunch of prs and my foot will be feeling a little better! Go Raiders

tb

2009-03-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hello all. Just writing to give everbody an update on my foot and the indoor season. I started my 10 minute a day routine last week with much anticipation. Although my toe still aches pretty much all the time, the Dr. thought it was time to start using the thing. I never thought that a 10 minute run on a track at 9 minute pace with toe pain could be so enjoyable! The last few days of running has made me realize how much running helps me stay sane. I have never considered myself a "runnaholic" or really a true athlete for that matter. In fact, for years running always ranked about number 10 on my list of things I want to do when I wake up every morning. But not until the last 6 months did it ever hit me how much stability and direction running gives me. Anyhow, long story short, I am really glad to be back to doing something productive.

On the coaching side of things, we had our second indoor meet of the season last Friday. Despite a lot of colds and nagging injuries there were a lot of improvements on the week before. The girls ran a state indoor qualifying time on the way to winning the 4x800. Senior stand out Emily Gustafson then ran the third best time in the state to win the 800. She also showed up to school a few days later and was inducted into the National Honor Roll Society. Sophmore Cody Margetis ran a 10 second pb to anchor our 4x800 of 2:15 to finish 2nd place. He then came back to take his first win ever in his heat of the mile, running a pb of 5:15! David Blackford ran a huge pb on his leg of the relay, running 2:07 then came back in the open 800 to finish a tough second place. There were a lot honorable mentions, as the kids all ran their butts off. We have such a young talented crew that are just starting to figure out how much fun track can be when you are trained and confident. We had this weekend off and ran a tough workout yesterday (5x1000) and have the next two weekeds off before we run the state indoor meet.

Thats all I have for now. I will try to get some more pictures up next week. I really would like to get some video out for you all so you can get an idea of how much work we have to do in our running drill that we started 3 weeks ago. Its amazing how hard it is to teach and learn how to run properly/efficiently. I am hoping to save that video and do another at the end of the season and show them how bad they looked at the beginning of the season! Take care and Go Raiders

tb

The Season Has Begun!

2009-02-27T09:48:00.001-08:00

Well, after a long cold winter the season is finally here. We opened up at the Grey Ghost Invite last Friday with a great start. I didnt expect much being that we have only been doing tempo runs and fartleks on the road, but there were a lot of suprises. Freshman Rachel Innes won her flight of the 800 in 2:43. What was even more impressive is that she has never ran track! She could be some real help in getting our 4x800 to the state meet.

Senior David Blackford opened up with his first indoor meet ever with a 2:09, good enough for second place. What is really exciting about David is that he has had a stress fracture every track season that I have had him.

Junior Hugh Gill opened up with a 4:49 mile, which was about 13 seconds off where I thought he should be, but still not a bad opener. We just need to work on his racing tactics, plus I think I may have worked him a little too hard last week. No worries though, we are getting ready for the state meet in 3 months. Last but not least, Emily Gustafson opened up with a 5:28 mile, breaking the school record by 3 seconds along the way. Like Hugh Gill, it was a good start, but quite a bit slower that we were hoping for. But being that they decided at the last minute to combine the two heats and throw 42 girls out onto an indoor track for a mile and we didnt even get a chance to do a stride, I will take it.

I just got back from seeing the very, very, very awesome Dr. John Grady in Chicago and the foot is doing pretty well. I have been given the clearance to start running in two weeks time---just in time for spring!!! I should have gotten a picture of me squirming while he hammered my toe with some sort of midieval torture device that is supposed to break up scar tissue. Thank God I am tough as nails. A normal human being would have cracked from the intense pain, but I just smiled and asked for more. (anybody that knows me knows how low my pain threshold is ; )

Thanks for reading and GO RAIDERS!

Back on My Feet!

2009-01-27T09:36:00.000-08:00

Well folks, I am now almost 6 weeks post foot op. and everything seems to be going as planned. I visited Dr. Grady in Chicago last week and he said everything is going according to plan. I did not realize, until I saw him then, just how bad off my foot really was. There was a cyst in the bone, a trapped nerve locked up in scar tissue, scar tissue inside the joint and a half my remaining sesmoid bone was dead. Lucky me, no wonder I would get pain all over my body just trying to do an easy 5 mile run. I would post a picture of my freaky foot, but I dont want to make anybody sick! So long story short, I will be back on the stationary bike in two weeks.

The kids are running pretty good at the moment. I have incorporated a whole new running drill/hurdle drill session into our program and everybody seems to really be responding to it good. Most importantly, it shuts them up and makes them focus when we are in the gym. I have also revamped the core routine and made it twice as dynamic and difficult. Im not sure why I have been babying them for so long. But being that we dont really get the intensity and duration of training out of our running that I would like, due to the weather and running on the roads, I feel like this is a great time to hit the gym harder and get us prepared for the outdoor season. We have a meet coming up on Feb 20 so I will get some pictures up from that. I am going to try to set up my video camera in the gym tomorrow and get some footage of the kids doing these drills so 1. you can see what we are up to and 2. they can look back in 3 months time and see how far they have progressed.

Well, thats all I got for you for now. Happy training and GO RAIDERS!!!

tb

Still Kicking!

2008-12-21T10:51:00.000-08:00

Well folks, I am coming out of my drug induced coma and am finally able to give everyone an update on the surgery. I had my foot cut on Friday morning in Chicago by Dr. John Grady, whom I cannot praise enough. I was so lucky to find a podiatrist in the midwest that was dedicated to his craft and willing to give every patient such personal attention. It also helps that his son, Martin, is an all state runner here in Illinois.

Dr. Grady found the source of my toe pain that has plagued me the last 3 years. From what I understand (I was a little out of it when talking to him after the surgery) he removed a cyst that had developed in the toe joint as well as a star shaped piece of calcified scar tissue that was floating around in the joint causing havoc on my cartilage. Fortunately there was no damage to the cartilage nor was there any damage to the surrounding tissue. So knock on wood, I may actually walk without pain someday! Actually, Dr. Grady is pretty confident that I will be back on my feet and pain free relatively quickly. The recovery process is fairly causious: two weeks with my foot propped up 50 min of every hour, two weeks of 40 min every hour, and two weeks of 30 min every hour. Hopefully I will be walking pain free in no time, which I havent been able to do since outdoor nationals 2002! That probably sounds like a bunch of jibberish, but the pain pill I just took is starting to take effect.

It is hard to put a timeline on the running prospects, and to be honest, I have trained myself not to when it comes to to my running career. But I will say that this is the most hope I have had in a very long time. So cross your fingers for me.

There is not a lot to report from the high school front. By IHSA rules I am not allowed to meet with the kids until after Christmas break. They have been keeping me posted on their running though, and it sounds like all are trudging through this horrid weather weve had the last 2 weeks. I am really pleased that I have a group of kids who are hooked and actually keep me posted on their progress. That is the attitude it takes to be successful.

I wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday and thanks to everyone for all their supportive cards, calls and emails. Go Raiders!

tb

Time to Move!

2008-12-07T18:18:00.000-08:00

I really love being home in the Midwest, but this weather is going to break me before the winter even starts! Boy did I took the warmth of the south for granted. Oh well, at least I have good company to keep me busy until things warm up here. Actually, I will be bored off my butt till the middle of January, as my Jan 19th surgery is quickly approaching. Let me say that I am really not looking forward to this one. At least we have found the problem and are taking care of it once and for all. Time off from running has never been a problem for me, as I find plenty to do to keep me busy. The hardest part of post surgery is asking people for help. And if you are a self sufficient person like myself, it is very difficult to rely on others for anything. But, like I said, hopefully this will all be over before winter ends and I will be back on my feet getting ready to race again.

There is not a lot to report from the coaching side of things. I sat down last week and racked my brain trying to come up with a good plan for the winter. I have a lot of talent on my hands and I do not want to goof it up. I actually buckled down and read Jack Daniels' and Joe Vigils' books, and after reading what seemed like chinese 4 times over, I have concluded that I am not changing things a bit. It was funny to read about all the things that I have instinctivly done for so long and understanding exactly what it does on a biological level. So hopefully we all stay healthy and motivated this winter because EP should be bringing home a lot of hardware this track season.

Thats all from this end. I will write again after the sugury and let everyone know how it went. Thanks again for reading. Go Raiders!

tb

Not Ready

2008-11-30T14:04:00.000-08:00

First off I hope everybody had a safe and happy holiday. I am not sure if I am totally ready for another winter to be honest. I had a warm welcome this morning as the snow fell for the first time in Central IL. Driving out to do a few chores, I ended up sideways in a ditch at 50 mps between a phone pole, a big osage-orange tree and a 50 foot ditch! Not to worry, I only ended up with a few scratches and $60 later I was back on the road. What I love even more than the snow is trying to coach 15 high school kids in it with no places to run. Oh well, that is life.

A few of the boys and 7 of the girls ran in a 2 mile race Friday morning cleaning up nicely. Only 1 kid did not bring home any hardware. We have already begun unofficial practice as of last week. We have a team full of talent on the girls side and now that IL has gone to a 3 class system, the boys have a legitimate shot at qualifying in the 4x800. I am really looking forward to pushing them all hard over the next 3 months without any races to get in the way.

I am not sure if I posted this last time, but I will be having foot surgery on December 19th. The Dr found that a cyst developed where the prior surgerys existed. Lucky me. That is the reason I have had this grinding pain in my toe for so long. Cross your fingers that this will be the last of it. I am not sure on the recovery time, but I am guessing 6-8 weeks. Just in time for Spring!

Drive safe out there and I will keep you all posted. Thanks again for reading and remember, GO RAIDERS!

tb

Sectionals and Beyond!

2008-11-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

The season has finally come to a close. Last Saturday we competed in the State qualifying sectional meet. The top 5 teams and top individuals advance. Being that we had 7 of the top 10 teams in the state in our sectional, I didnt have any delusions of moving on. I did believe that we were capable of being top 10, which would have been a wonderful cap on a good fall. I also believed that freshman star Kevin Eades would bounce back from an illness and was capable of qualifying as an individual.

To save the drama, I will tell you that he did just that! He ran a personal best of 15:42 and finished 14th overall and 5th individual! Being that there were only 5 or 6 freshman total to qualify for the state meet, I thought that was pretty incredible. He ran a perfect race, going through the mile in 35th and moving up slowly over the next mile and a half. Then he pulled out that big finish to catch 7 people over the last 600 meters. And that finish qualified him as the first freshman in EP history to qualify for the state meet as an individual!

In the end we finished a respectable 11th place, putting us (in my opinion) in the top 25 statewise. Junior Hugh Gill and Alec Gonzales both ran gutsy races and ended up with personal bests of 16:11 16:35. David Blackford also competed well to drop his pb to 17:01. I think we could have ran a little better from that point on, but cannot say that I was disappointed with anybody. It is very difficult to race twice a week for 8 weeks in a row, especially when you are young and not well trained. What I was most excited about is that the team all stayed around the next week to train and be with Kevin and are all excited to getting to training this winter and next summer so that we are all at the big dance next year. (talks cheap, so we will see ; ) We have also decided to rent a van and I am going to take a group up to the Footlocker Regional in Wisconsin Thanksgiving weekend.

Kevin went on to finish 104th this weekend, runing 16:30. A dissappointing finish, but not an idicator of how well he ran all season and how well he composed himself as a 15 year old freshman. Mark my words, he will be one of the best in the state next year. He text me later on after the race appologizing for letting me down and my reply was "I hope your joking. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Your will to train and live the lifestyle will pay off. Do not underestimate what you have accomplished this season. There are few freshman that have done what you have. It has been a pleasure to coach you and we will get you to the top of the podium, probably sooner than I think. Now try to enjoy a few days off. "

On a personal note, I got results back from an mri last week with good news and bad. I have a cyst that has developed which is probably what is causing all the pain in my toe. That can be fixed with a simple injection (if im lucky), and if not, can be removed. Bad news is that the other sesmoid bone is also fractured and half of it is neucrotic (dead). Hopefully that will not need to be extracted, but I will find out more this week when I go see the doc. It is unbelievable that it has taken so long to figure out why I have been having so much foot pain over the last 6 years. Hopefully this will be the end of it, but I will definately keep you all posted.

Thanks for reading and Go Raiders!

tb

Conference/Regional Meets

2008-10-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Championship season is here, and so far, we have handled it like pro's. Last Friday evening we competed in the Mid Illini Conference Meet, finishing second to Metamora, the sixth ranked team in the state.

For the second year in a row, we had the individual champion in the fresh/soph race. Freshman Gage VanOrder had a blistering kick (arrh, he's just a freshman) over the last 200 meters to win in a personal best 17:25. Rookies Cody Lacross, Evan Jenkins, Tyler Ford and Mike Ginz all ran personal bests as well to help finish 4th as a team.

Every kid in the Varsity race raced their hearts out to all finish with personal bests. Junior Hugh Gill finally raced like he was capable, tieing his pb of 16:16, fading to 11th place and just missing all-conference by 3 spots. Sophmores Alec Gonzales and Alex Cortes both crushed 17 min for the first time running 16:42 and 16:57. Drew Thomas and David Blackford both ran 30 second pr's, coming so close to breaking that 17 min mental barrier running 17:01 and 17:03 respectively. The very hardworking and consistent Brant Watson bettered his time from conference last year of 18:24, running 17:35!

But the race of the day belonged to freshman Kevin Eades. Shadowing the conference favorite through a pb at 2 miles, Kevin let inexperience get the better of him and gave a up a little too much ground. Sprinting up the home stretch to finish second he almost ran down the leader over the last 200 meters and ran 15:42. To put things into perspective, I ran 15:35 on the same course my freshman year! The best part about it all was that he was so angry that he finished second that he wouldnt talk to anybody for a half hour. That is the kind of attitude you dont see in many freshman, and the kind of attitude that is going to take him a long way in his athletic career.

I was enourmously proud of every kid last Friday. Most had to be scraped off the tarp with a spatula afterwards, and that is all I can ask as a coach.
Yesterday we competed in the Regional meet.

There is not really much to report about that one. It was a slow, cool windy day. We tied for third, but finished fourth counting back to 6th man. We looked a little tired and flat. Not sure if it is the come down after a hard effort last week or just knowing we needed to run an average race to advance, but we got the job done. First and second place are ranked 3rh and 5th respectively in the state. This qualifies us for the Sectional meet next weekend on our home course. To be brutally honest, our gold medal race would be top 10. On the positive side we get 7 of our top 8 back for next year, so this will be an excellent experience for all. Actually, 8 of the top 12 teams in the state are in our sectional and only 5 qualify for state, so it should be a eye opener for those who are serious about wanting to qualify for state next year, but have never put a real summer of training in.

I will keep everyone posted on how it goes this weekend. I was up in Chicago last week meeting with one of the top podiatrists in the country and he seemed to be pretty optimistic about getting my foot right. I had an MRI Friday, so I should have the report tomorrow and see what the Dr thinks. Thanks for reading and cross your fingers for us (and me!).

Go Raiders

Getting Ready for Championship Time

2008-10-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

We are in our final preparations for the championship part of the season here in EP. Tuesday evening we finished up the conference duel meets with a big win over up-and-coming Morton. That put us at 6-1 for the season, the first time since i was here in 1995. The only team beating us was number seven in the state, Metamora.

Every kid ran big prs last Saturday at the Delevan Classic, bringing home a 2nd place trophy. It was a flighted race and we medaled 6 out of the 7 races! Most suprising were my two 80 lb freshmen who both broke 20 minutes for the first time ever for 3 miles. Actually, neither had ever been under 24 minutes!

Tomorrow is our last invite for the season, the Metamora Invitational. Because we are so young, I am running all the underclassmen in the fresh/soph race so we can bring home some more hardware. I am holding out the top 5 runners for a blowout workout tonight of mile, 2x800, 4x400 at the conference course, as we havent really had a chance to do any real hard workouts in between racing twice a week.

My running is gradually coming around, and I will really start to put more emphasis on it after the season is done in a few weeks. Our goals for the next few weeks are as follows:

2nd Conference (Metamora is just too strong)
Hugh Gill and Kevin Eades All Conference
Repeat as Conference Fresh/Soph Champs
Top 5 Regionals
Top 10 Sectionals

That is a pretty tall order with the group I have, but you got to set big goals if you are ever going to run big. Thanks for reading and I will keep you posted.

Go Raiders!

2008 XC Season Has Begun!

2008-09-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

We finally kicked off the fall season two weeks ago at the Galesburg Invite. Being as young and inexperienced as we are, I didnt expect to bring home any team trophies. I was though anxious to see how well the freshmen and sophmores would race after putting in a pretty solid summer. A couple suprises were: senior David Blackford running 18:17 for his first cross country race ever, sophmore Cody Margetis running a pb of 18:39, and most impressive was freshman Kevin Eades who placed 12th in the varsity race and running 17:10 for his first 3 mile race ever!!! I knew he was going to be good, but didnt realize just how much talent he actually has. After the race he was grinnig from ear to ear, not a bit winded and told me he had at least 30 more seconds in him!

Last weekend we came back to race at the huge Woodruff Invite at famous Detwiller Park here in Peoria where the state meet has been held for the last 30 plus years. Normally the course is track fast and is a great statewide benchmark for coaches to really see what the kids are capable of. But after 10 inches of rain for the week prior, it turned into a mudpit of survival. I have noticed that it is extremely difficult for the young kids to strength races in the mud. In all honesty I really cant say that anybody on the team ran particularly well. Some of it had to do with the rain and mud, a hard week of workouts, 4 injuries and 6 with colds. The talented junior Drew Thomas did finally step up decide to race to run a personal best. The highlight of the meet was watching my 6 underclassmen run in the open race which had 790 participants! Three minutes prior to the start of the race the heavens opened up and the starting line began roaring like the Spartans!!! Althought they got beat down pretty bad, they did say that it was the most memorable race they had ever ran. Unfortunately my camera was ruined and I lost all my pictures of the mess and mayhem.

Tuesday we raced a conference duel meet against our arch rival Metamora (who is ranked nubmer 10 in the state). Although we got beat pretty bad, the big suprise was freshman Kevin Eades outkicking the returning conference farvorite down the homestretch to run 16:20 on a hot, tough and muddy course. What was even more impressive that he did it with one shoe on after losing it on a corner at the two mile!!! Mark my word, this kid may be as talented as any I have ever seen. Not just the physical, but the emotional and mental perspective is going to take him a long way. There were many others who ran big personal bests and are finally starting to figure out that we do have a bit of talent on this team, but that we have a lot of work to do in the off season if we are going to accomplish what we are capable of.

Yesterday was our weekend off from racing, as we held our second annual EPCC Run-A-Thon. The kids get donations, either per mile or for total distance, and they run a mile loop marked in the woods for 90 minutes. This helps pay for the food, equipment, t-shirts, shoes ect... that we need. We raised almost $1,000, then had a great picnic afterwards. Every kid ran at least 10 miles, and Hugh Gill and Kevin Eades ran 13 before I had to pull them. It was a lot of fun to hear them talk about how tired they were but that they could have kept going. For most of them, their longest continuest run ever was 6-7 miles. It is a lot of fun as a coach to see them beat but being so excited that they were able to accomplish things they never thought were capable.

The most exciting part of this season thus far is the parental support that we are finally starting to get. Several parents were out yesterday to help work on the course and then got to talking about bringing a grill to the weekend races and having food for everyone afterwards! That is exactly what I have been working so hard to get established here at EP. A family oriented culture where all the parents are out watching their kids improve week by week. That not only keeps the athletes more interested, but also attracts others who want to be a part of something special.

As far as my running is concerned, it is just biking in the morning and running my 6-10 in the afternoon. Nothing really exciting tp report on that. We are now in the heart of the season and will be racing every Tuesday and Saturday for the next four weeks. Thanks for reading and I will keep you posted on all the success.

Go Raiders

tb

Its Finally Time to Race

2008-09-04T03:55:00.000-07:00

Good morning everyone. As I sit here typing we are only 48 hours from our first race of the year! We have been dealing with a lot of the ussual injury and heat related problems the last few weeks, but hopefully their frail little legs will start to come around just in time for racing season. I think we are a long way from being fully "prepared", but I am hoping that when we start racing running will take on a new priority for a while.

I actually have a great group of young runners who have a lot of ability. In particular, freshman Kevin Eades has been running amazing. He has been ahead of last years state qualifier Hugh Gill on every run. Although I know we are not going to break any records this season, I think we will do some pretty good things. What is difficult for me is knowing how good we are going to be the next two years and trying to stay focused on the season at hand. As good as we are going to be doesnt help the fact that we are going to get beat up a little bit this season. I guess that is all part of the game though.

What I have noticed about myself over the last few weeks is just how obsessively ultra-competitive I am, and I find myself getting really frustrated with the kids who are not that way, which is the majority of them. I believe a lot of this frustration stems from the fact that I set extremely high goals for myself (something I believe is just innate) and I am willing to do whatever it takes to achieve those goals. So I guess the real problem lies in the fact that we are just to young of a team to have any sort of long-term goals at the moment. If they only knew how far their talent could take them, they would be a lot more motivated to get up every morning and do all the things necessary to get to the top.

My running has been going great. Well, I wouldnt call it great, but relatively speaking it has been going pretty well. I have been riding for about an hour in the morning and then doing the workouts with the team on most days. My plantar is not hurting, but I can feel it is tight when I get up in the mornings. I am planning on making a trip out east to see Dr. Brian Fullem, The Man, and get fitted for a new pair of orthodics if I ever get the chance to get away for a few days. Knock on wood, I will be finishing up a great summer this time next year.

Thats all I got for now. I hope all that are reading are doing well and I will keep you posted on how the meet goes this weekend. Happy running and Go Raiders!

tb

Back To School

2008-08-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

We are finally back to class for the 2008-09 school year, and I couldn't be happier. It has been a pretty good summer for a few of the kids, but all-in-all it has been pretty frustrating for me. We had six very motivated and talented freshaman join over the summer, as well as two new juniors. Unfortunately the senior group who I relied on for leadership and rides home are all gone so it was very difficult to get everybody to practice on a regular basis. In some ways it is like starting all over again.

Yesterday was our first practice and I decided to throw a little hill workout at the kids and see who has been running over the summer. It was pretty apparent from the get got that the upper classmen spent their summer playing XBox and that the underclassmen have been doing what I asked of them as there were 3 freshmen in the top 5 throughout the workout! Altought we do not have any superstars, one more year of CONSISTENT training and I could have a pretty dang good team next fall. In particular, freshman Kevin Eades has shown that he has the talent as well as the mindset to be a real special athlete. Mark my word, you will be hearing a lot more about him from me in the future.

There is not much to report on my running. Just plotting away. Actually my motivation has had a real rejuvination while spending so much time watching the games. I have been getting the same question over and over during the last week, "Is it hard to watch?". My answer is always the same, HECK NO! I have to admit that I really wasnt that dissappointed that I wasnt going to Beijing at first, as I didnt have that high of expectations for the Chinese. But after watching the opening ceremonies all I could say was "WOW".

There is nothing more exciting to me that watching the successes and failures of athletes competing at the biggest stage in the world and seeing how they handle the pressures. All the highs and lows, the emotions of the people who have dedicated their lives to one goal is like nothing else you will ever see. It was a little frustrating watching the distance events, particularly the steeplechase, but I just keep one thing in mind, London is only 4 years away!

That being said, I hope everyone is enjoying the big show. I am really suprised and a little jealous that NBC is having such wonderful coverage. I wish they had their stuff together 4 years ago, but is great for track and every other sport for that matter. Take care and I will keep you posted over the season. We have our first meet of the year two weeks from Saturday, so cross you fingers (were going to need it ; )

tb

Out With the Old

2008-07-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we are in full swing with our summer training here in Central IL. It was a bit of a rough start as I have lost my 4 leaders from last year. I didnt know how much I depended on them, not just for leadership on the course, but for rides for those who are not able to make it to practice on their own. It was a is frustrating having kids who want to come to practice everyday but have other commitments (work, band, ect) or cannot get rides. We are starting to wrinkle those logistical problems out over the last week.

I have inherited 4 new freshmen, and with a little work, I truly believe we will have a top 10 team in the state of Illinois in 2009! Although it is a bit of work teaching everything over again, I believe it will be very nice to have a new core group to mold from day 1. We started this week with our first hill session, so there were some sore butts and a bunch of whining going the last few days. Today was our first trip away from the home course, where we do most of our practicing. We got a school van and drove out to the Rock Island Trail, an old railroad that was converted into a running trail of crushed cynder. The workout was a 2 mile warm up and then 6 miles of on/off mile repeats (3 hard and 3 easy continues in case you are wondering). Although the long straight ways of the trail can be a bit monotonous, the kids handled it pretty well, and I think really enjoyed going somewhere new to run.

We will also be getting a new volunteer coach starting next week which is ecspecially exciting for me as it can be real burden trying to chase 20 kids around, coach, worry about injury, logistics, ect. Most importantly, it will be nice to teach someone who wants to learn and continue what I started here down the road when it is time for me to step aside.

My running has been going pretty well, just plotting around doing my theraputic 5-10 miles. No foot problems as of yet, so cross your fingers, I may actually be running track this time next year! I have also decided to start volunteering at a local kids charity, The Neighborhood House, which mentors and gives shelter for inner city youth. Probably going to spread myself a little thin, but what the hey, I got the time.

Thats it for now. Happy running and Go Raiders!

tb

No Breaks

2008-06-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well, we are back at it again. After giving the kids a month "off", practice has officially started for the 2008 cross country season. It was a wonderful suprise to show up at practice on Monday and find some new faces in the crowd. I have inhereted a talented new crop of freshman, whom I am convinced can really make a difference on this team right away. Although we did lose a great crop of seniors, the hard work and dedication of the underclassmen over the last 18 months will really pay dividens this fall.

There is not really a whole lot to report on the coaching end of things. Most of the kids ran our local road race, the Steamboat Classic and fared well. There are two different distances within the race, the 4 miler and the 15k, and 5 of the group actually opted for the 15k! I think I may finally be turning these kids into runners ; ) We will also be doing a 7 mile trail race this weekend at a local park, a race we did last year and had 4 medal winners.

I personally have been trudging through the training and have not had any setbacks as of yet. The toe feels pretty good as does the rest of the body. I have gotten back on a serious core routine and am back to lifting regularly. I also had the priveledge of being nominated the assistant race director of the Steamboat Classic, which took up a big chunk of time over the last few weeks. I have been going back on forth whether I am going to go out to the Olympic Trials next week. There is a big part of me that loves to watch the competition, but it is also a bit painful to watch knowing that I could be in there shaking things up. Call me bitter. Anyhow, that is it for now. Hopefully next time you hear from me I will be another 2 weeks along in my training and I will have 20 motivated kids out for practice everyday at 8 am!

tb

Season Finale

2008-05-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

We finally reached the end of a exciting and record breaking 2008 track season. Despite the unusaully cold and windy spring, there were so many things to brag about.

Last I left everyone, the girls were getting prepared for their conference meet. Although were were a bit shorthanded, they ran tough as nails. Junior Emily Gustafson ran the tough 2 mile-mile double, finishing second in both and running a season pb in the process. Then being the team player that she is, she lead off our 4x4 which also finished second. Sophmore Cassie Lohmeir ran the 800/1600 double, placeing 2nd in the 8 and winning the 1600 with season prs in both! She also came back to anchor our 2nd place 4x400. Both girls earned All-Conference honors in the process. Freshman Ashley Schmitt fought through a bad case of asthma placing 5th in the 3200, then came back in the fresh/soph mile and got nipped at the line by .05 for the win. Not to shabby for a little fresh who had never run a competitive 2 mile in her life!

The girls then went on to the state qualifying sectional meet where both Emily and Cassie qualified for the state finals! Emily placed fifth in the 3200 to qualify on time, running a season best of 11:25. Cassie qualified on time as well, running 5:17 to finish for a hard fought third in the mile. I cannot tell you how proud I was of both of them to run though the frustration of not being in the hunt for a win, and to dig in when they both were having an off day to still qualify for the meet. It showed a lot of character.

The state meet was not as exciting as I would have hoped, as both girls ran right off season and personal bests to finish respectable. As it is at any big race though, if you are not one of the stud top dogs coming in, you are really just racing at the mercy of everyone else. It is pin your ears back and pray to God! What we took away from it though is that we do have the talent to compete at a state level, we just need the training to back it up. I really thought the girls would want a long break after a tough, grinding season, but they were asking for summer workouts before we even got back on the van to head home. That just goes to show the kind of competitive, hard working kids that I have been blessed to coach and mentor. I told them, as I have told thousands of young runners, they have the talent and the desire, they just need some CONSISTENT hard work to back it up.

Where to start with the boys? I have to admit, as badly as I wanted to think that the they were capable of running 8 min for the 2 mile relay, we really hadnt done much throughout the season to justify that. But one thing I have learned about high school runners is that they somehow find several gears which I have no idea existed at the most random of times. Thank God all 4 decided to find those gears at the conference meet! With 4 other teams capable of running sub 8:10 in our conference, it seemed a long shot that we would win. I really believed on a good day we were capable of running 8:08-8:12. But after a 1:59 lead-off leg by senior Nick Leiby, a 2:03 leg by senior Brock Kingsland, a 2:01 3rd leg from soph Hugh Gill and a 1:56 leg by senior Shane Lieby we came away with a conference title and a huge season best of 8:02!!! I do not believe I have ever seen a happier group of runners than I did after that relay. Not only was it good enough for the win, but it was the 7th fastest relay in the state of IL! Shane Lieby then came back in the 800 to get nipped for second by the state cross country champ, still running a school record 1:56.5! That was the real highlight of the meet, as the rest of the relay team ran like complete poo. My fault as a coach to let them get too excited at the beginning of the meet.

The fresh/soph kids had an excellent meet as well. Cody Margetis ran a pb in the mile, clocking a 5:12. Sophmore Drew Thomas ran a pr in the 3200, breaking 11 min for the first time. Alex Cortes ran just off his pbs in both the mile and 2 mile, scoring in both. The fresh/soph 4x400 also won, conisisting of two distance kids and two sophmore jumpers. I was really glad that the young kids got an opportunity to see that winning relay though, as it was proof to them that if they just commit 2 hours out of their day, 6 days a week, they can accomplish anything. To some so far in just a short amount of time just reinforces to everybody that there is plenty of talent in this young group.

On paper we were the favorites leading into the state qualifying sectional meet in the 4x800. But I knew it would not be that easy. Getting 4 17 year-olds to perform their best all on the same day is a real challenge. The boys went from the Rocky 1 attitude of "nothing to lose" to the Rocky 4 attitude of "well, all we can do is screw up". That is where perspective comes into play. What I have found after coaching at this level is that high school kids running is so much more mental than physical, and their margin for error, as well as for improvement, is scary big. Just putting the moment into context and helping them realize that this is just a small step in their lives, I think helped calm a lot of their anxiety. Helping them realize that we do not have to all run 5 second prs to make it to the big dance, but just running what we did at the conference meet is all that was needed out of them.

Anyhow, long story short, we ran 8:05 and placed second to our arch rivals, qualifying the first distacne runners from East Peoria for the state meet since 1995 (that being me)!!! Man alive were those boys excited. It wasnt our best time, but it got the job done. Actually, had we not gotten so pumped up and went out in 55 for the first 400, we probably would have run 8 flat. Just like the conference meet, Shane came back shortly after to win the 800 and the rest of the guys ran like poo. But we got the job done.

The state meet was quite anticlimatic, as I held Shane off the relay to run the open 800, in hopes of running 1:55. I really thought we were ready for it, but everybody looked really tired and nervous. Actually, every guy bombed, so I guess I am to blame. Not sure if all the big races had finally caught up with us, or if it was the pressure of the meet, but I guess you cannot replace experience. We had a wonderful time at the meet though, despite the stares and comments that the guys got for dying their hair white!!! We looked like a bunch of little Eminems : ) Although it wasnt our best effort, it is a memory that will last a lifetime for the boys.

Looking back on the last 18 months, I do not think we could have accomplished much more. Regional cross country champs, missing the state xc meet by 10 points, qualifying the first indivilual to the state xc meet since 1995, school record in the 4x400, 400, 800, first distance individual and relay to qualify for the state track meet since 1995, conference champs and a whole lot of personal bests. I do not claim to be an expert coach by any means, in fact I am learning most of it on the fly. Coaching high schoolers is a whole different beast than coaching a handfull of elite athletes. But what I have found at the high school is that there is a lot of talent out there, and if you just give them a little attention and give them some hope and direction, you can make a world of difference. As much work as it has been, I am extremely grateful that ITA has given me the opportunity to get out and touch so many young lives.

Enough of the sappy stuff. Its back to the grind. We have lost a lot of senior talent, but we also have gained a lot of experience and confidence. Unofficial practice starts in a week, so I am going to go fishing and enjoy my break! Happy Running

p.s. I will try to post a few videos of the races taken over the last few weeks later today or tomorrow. They arent exactly Spielberg, but I will get the hang of it.

Last Weeks Pictures

2008-04-29T17:42:00.001-07:00

Above: Top L-Nick Leiby (800 meter pr 2:03); Top R-Brant Watson and Cody Margetis (1600 meter prs 5:32 and 5:22); Middle L-David Blackford (800 meter pr 2:09 split); Middle R-Hugh Gill (800 meter pr 2:07 split); Bottom L-Shane Leiby (800 meter 2:05 split, came back 30 min later tieing the 400 meter school record 50.2!); Bottom R-Hugh Gill (1600 pr 4:45); Bottom-Brock Kingsland (800 pr split 2:05, came back yesterday to win the mile and run a huge pb of 4:48!)

Here are a few pictures the kids took for me from last week at a conference triangular meet with our two biggest rivals. I was hoping to get some video with the new camera last night, but once again it rained : ( Every picture is of a kid running a personal best that night!

The girls conference meet is Thursday, and Friday will be the true test to see if the boys 4X800 team is capable of qualifying for the state meet. I will keep you posted. Happy Running!

Big Week

2008-04-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

Last I updated everyone, we had returned from our first outdoor meet of the season in Moline, IL with a very bright start to the spring. Unfortunately, the weather has not cooperated since. After a few dual meets with hurricane force winds, we had to cancel 4 meets in a row due to snow, cold, wind and rain. We have also had a lot of injuries since we started workout out agressively on the track, ecspecially those who did not train all winter. And although we did not run particularly fast times at those meets, we competed very well. Even better was that I have successfully recruited 4 "sprinters" to become distance runners and to run cross country this fall!

Last Friday night was our first real chance to get good competition, but once again the weather slowed us down a bit. Despite 30 mph winds and torential rains, good things are sure to come. The 4x800 team that I was sure could run 8:12 finally proved to themselves that the work we put in over the winter is starting to pay off, as we cracked 8:30 without my two studs. Shane Lieby won the open 800 with a solo performance and pr of 1:59. His first time under two minutes! He then came back on Tuesday and tied the shcool record on his first attempt at an open 400m with a 50.2! I am so jealous of runers with that kind of foot speed. Senior Nick Leiby, Shane's twin brother, ran 4:43 to place 2nd in the mile. Although that is not near what I think he is capable of, this proves that with a healthy hip and a warm calm evening, he will run 4:30 before he graduates. Nick also came back Tuesday evening to run a pr of 2:03 in the 800 after going out in a suicidal 56 (not his fault, bad coaching)! Senior Brock Kingsland finally broke through in the 800, running a 4 second pr of 2:05. David Blackford, or Mr Glass as I like to call him, is starting to round into shape, running 2:09 (just in time for him to get hurt again). Freshmen Cody Margetis, Alex Cortes and Brant Watson ran personal bests in the mile, running 5:22, 4:51 and 5:36 respectively.

We have not had the same amount of success on the girls side, but there have been some good performances. Unfortunately we are very short of numbers on the girls squad, which has placed the few I have in a tough position of running more events than needed at times for the sake of scoring points. I could not be more proud of 3 in particular: Emily Gustafson, Cassie Lohmier and Ashley Schmitt. They have ran 3-4 events every Tuesday for the last 3 weeks and have not complained or moaned a bit. And although they are not running as fast as they want, they have competed hard and that will pay off over the next two weeks when we back off for next weeks conference meet.

As all may have noticed from others blogs, the athletes at In-The-Arena have so kindly been supplied with digital video cameras. These will allow our viewers and supporters an ability to see first hand what goes on behind the scenes from day to day. I have to admit I am about as tech-savy as a monkey, so please bear with me as I try to figure out how to use the camera, post in on here and then make some sort of sense of what it is that you are watching. I did have some of my injured kids take video of our meet on Tuesday night, but most of the video is of chopped up races. Tomorrow night is our big home invite of the girls and a huge invite just down the road for the boys. I will really try to take some good footage and post it over the weekend at both of those meets (hopefully they kids give you a good show) and give you a look at what is happening here in Central Illinois.

Thanks for listening and Go Raiders!!!

The Outdoor Season Has Begun

2008-04-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

After a long grueling winter, I am relieved to inform everyone that our outdoor season finally kicked off Saturday at the Moline Invite. I say relieved because it is difficult to keep 15 year olds motivated to do workouts when the next race is still 3 months away. The weather was not suited for world record conditions, but nonetheless, we had a lot of successes, a few mediocre performances and fortunately, no bombs.

Starting off on the girls side, junior star Emily Gustafson cruised to a win the two mile by over 30 seconds, and then came back with a bit of a dissappointing third place finish in the mile. She was quite upset with herself for letting the leaders go, but reassured her that she has heavy legs for the first time in her life (from training all winter, her first time) and that she will feel snappy when the time is right. Freshman Ashely Schmitt placed second in her first two mile ever, running just over 12 min. Again, she was a little dissappointed with herself, but as a coach, I was thrilled to see her compete so well and hang in there with a 20 degree windchill, which is really hard on her asthma. Sophmore Cassie Lohmeir ran her first race of the year, placing 2nd in the 800 with a time of 2:26. Like the other two, she was a bit mad at herself for not going after it earlier, but 2:26 is pretty amazing for a 16 year old who plays basketball all winter and has only been running for 4 weeks. Needless to say, we have a lot of talent on the girls side. Best of all, we had a real desire to work hard, compete and see the long term picture.

There were some great races on the boys side as well. My pic for athlete of the day was definately freshman Alex Cortes, who ran his first two mile ever (hanging in well in A heat) and then came back to place second in his heat of the mile running 4:50!!! I cannot express how happy I was for a kid who has not missed a practice since he started with me last summer. Expect to hear a lot more about him. Sophomore Hugh Gill also ran a 15 second pr in the mile, running 4:45. And last, but not least, my senior twins Shane and Nick Leiby kicked off the season with quick splits in the 4X800 and coming back and placing 3rd and 4th respectively in the open 800. We were all a little dissapointed with the times, as I really thought they would run around 2 min. It made me sit down and try to rethink what I have been doing and what I have planned for the next month. As a coach, you must not put the blame of bad performances on anybody but yourself, and after looking back on all the work we have done over the last 5 months, I have decided to stick with the plan. What really threw me for a loop was, after having heavy legs in both 800s, and thinking the 4x400 splits would be sluggish, Shane lead off the relay with a 50 flat!!! Into a cold headwind with two races under his belt and the first time running really hard all season.

So to sum it up, all-in-all, it was a pretty good start to the season. I do have a lot of injuries, especially with the younger kids. Some of that is my fault, as it took me a while realized that some of them just cannot handle anything but easy 25 min runs. I really believe that now that the races have begun, our level of intensity and urgency will elevate. Like I said before, coaching track is a heck of a lot of problems. Dealing with so many problems and personalities can make a coach feel a bit insane at times, but it is all worth it when you see a kid work his rear off all winter and come out and run 4:50 for his first high school mile ever!!!

Take care all and GO RAIDERS!

tim

A Great Start

2008-03-03T11:43:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2008

We finally had our first indoor race of the 2008 season, and I couldnt have been any happier. It has been a long while since the Raiders have raced (ecspecially in high school time), so I was very curious to see how the training over the last 4 month would affect us. I am usually pretty spot on to what I think an athlete is capable of, but I always error on the side of cation when trying to determine an early race pace. Being that we have not been on the track for a very long time, I wanted everyone to be out relatively comfortable and try to even split the first and second halves of the race. Although I am not a big fan of getting done with a race and having a lot of energy, I always feel it is better to start the first race of the season saying "I could have ran a lot faster". The annoying thing for me was that I had a previously planned trip to Florida, so I had to miss the race, and what is really disturbing is that a big part of me wanted to bail on a free trip to the Florida Keys to stay at home and watch a high school indoor meet! I think I may actually seek help concerning this.

Anyhow, the kids ran out of their minds. Senior Shane Leiby placed second with a 10 second pr of 4:32 (and he negative split the second half). His twin brother, who has not worked out for he last 6 weeks because of a knee problem ran 4 seconds off a pr with a 4:51. Senior Brock Kingsland missed his goal of breaking 5 minutes for the first time by two seconds, running 5:02 and freshman Alex Cortez ran a pr of 5:01 (in my opinoin one of the real highlights of the meet). Also pr'ing were freshman Cody Margetis and David Haldeman (who just started running with us a week prior) with times of 5:34.

On, the girls side, star Emily Gustafson ran a disappointing 5:31, and despite stopping a lap early, Ashley Schmitt broke the 6 minute barrier for the first time at 5:47. Freshman Brittany Grant broke the 3 minute mark for her first half mile ever running 2:55 as welll. Not to bad for a freshman who has been on the treadmill everyday since December and has never ran a track race further than 200 meters!

All in all, I would say it was a successful start to the season, and very encouraging for whats to come outdoors. We will be racing our last indoor meet of the season in two weeks at the University of Illinois, and hopefully we will have a couple of state indoor meet qualifiers. Until then it is back to the grind for 6 more weeks, which will put us at the beginning of the outdoor season.

Best to all

Tough Week

2008-02-11T05:48:00.000-08:00

February 11, 2008

Well, it is that time of year in the midwest where training is pretty tough. With no races in sight, the weather miserable and the grind of running high mileage combined with considerable quality makes it a chore at times. But we have continued to soldier on. I continue to tell the kids that this will be the toughest week we have all year and I believe they are starting to get sick of hearing it!

We have had a really successful training week over the last two weeks, and the host of knee pain problems (5 in total) finally seem to be clearing up. Saturday we met with the Limestone Rockets, a rival conference team (the coach is a good friend of mine), and did a 4-6 mile tempo run together. We thought that it would bring an extra element of competitiveness to the workout as well as give some of the kids who usually run alone, to fast or too slow somebody to share the pain with. This has been my second attempt in as many weeks at doing the long tempo, which I feel is more important than any other single workout a distance runner can do. There is a bit of an art to the tempo run, ecspecially with inexperienced runners who do not know their bodies very well. Most high schoolers know two gears; dog-meat slow and fast as ####. What I am trying to do with the long tempo is find those gears in the middle and sustain it over a longer period of time. Although it is frustrating to watch, I trust that by the end of this summer (in prep for xc) we will have it down.

My running is going as slow as planned. Nothing really exciting to report, just 4-5 miles a day with all the weight room stuff as well. The only exciting bit of news on this end is that I will be going to Florida in two weeks for a little warming up, but being the track junkie that I am, Im thinking about bailing on that so I dont miss our first indoor meet of the season!

Ice Cubes!

2008-01-22T06:12:00.000-08:00

Runners must be stupid and/or crazy. That is all I have to say after standing out in the bitter cold the last two weeks watching prep athletes suffer through workouts in sub zero temps. When you am doing it yourself self, one tends to rationalize things. But when you are a spectator, you think to yourself "What on earth are these fools thinking?".

Like it has been everywhere else on the eastern half of the country the last week, it has been utterly miserable here in Central Illinois. But I must be doing something right, because the kids keep showing up for practice. I believe that for the senior group, they are starting to understand the this is their last go at making a state meet. It is great to see a group of kids who have a united goal and are willing to suffer through some pretty rough workouts, and set a standard for the younger ones.

One of the most difficult things that I have found when working with young athletes is making them understand the importance of preparation. In that, I mean seeing the big picture and understanding that what we do today has a direct effect on what happens 6 months from now. Most young athletes (I being one of them until late in my college career) believe that they can perform to the best of their ability by jogging for a few weeks before the season and then coming out to the competitions and just racing hard. Yes, they will run ok if they race tough, but where is it getting them in terms of their goals? So I have been extremely proud of all the kids that have been out training in the "pre-season" with us, ecspecially the younger athletes who have not yet developed any real long-term goals druing their short athletic careers. Attatched are some pictures (that I hope I have done right) from last saturday during a long run of 70 minutes with three 10 minute pickups in the middle. The temp was hovering right at zero and the wind chill was at minus 15! I actually had a few parents call and tell me that their kid was not coming to practice, which was understandable.

Not a whole lot of reporting to do on my running, as it has just been easy theraputic runs of 30-60 minutes. My foot appears to be ok since the shock wave procedure that was done last month. Right now, my only frame of mind has been to run easy as possible and focus on proper biomechanics.

Aside from the running and coaching thing life has been pretting boring. This is the worst time of year for an outdoorsman, as hunting season has come to a close and fishing looks a long way off, unless you are a complete nutter and are out standing on 10 inches of ice trying to catch a few dinkers the size of your hand that are too frozen to even remotely fight. I am heading to Boston MA this weekend to watch and help out at the Boston Indoor Games. It will be a good chance to catch up with Mrs. Rowe and other friends who will be there, as well as watch a local Peoria girl run the h.s. mile, who is coached by a close friend of mine.

Sot that is it for this one. Stay warm and chat at you all in a few weeks as we prepare for our first indoor meet of the season! Take care.

tim

Winters Here

2007-12-23T14:19:00.000-08:00

December 23, 2007

Well, winter has officially started here in Central Illinois. The wind chill is currently at zero and a few inches of snow on the ground. None-the-less, practice must continue. There has a been a welcomed coaching change on the girls track team, and I am really looking forward to working with the new staff coming in. Last season was a bit of a down year for the EP girls track team, with only 12 girls competing by the end of the spring. But things are on the up and up, with a lot of young talent in our freshman class.

My position will remain the same as it was last year, coaching boys and girls distance events. The one tough thing about coaching both in track is that we do not have any of the same meets, so I am always being torn between the two. Fortunately, the distance kids are fairly responsible (the girls obviously more so) and self sufficient, so I do not have to worry to much about things when I am not able to be with one team or the other.

Although official practice does not begin until Jan 14, I have been really suprised at the turnout of kids for winter training. Unfortunately due to ridiculous IHSA rules, I am not allowed to run practices or even write workouts for that matter! How do people think they are going to learn how to run??? What do I know though, leave it up to the higher ups who have never ran before, and probably never left the state before, to make up such ridiculous rules. Anyhow, despite my best efforts with the AD, the kids are out there are getting themselves ready for the track season. I have really been hammering how important it is to think long term, and now they are starting to get that you cannot perform to your best off 2 months of training. It is nice to finally see them buy into the off season workouts, and now that they have seen that they are capable of way more than they ever thought, most are hooked!

We will be doing the grind of winter training for the next two months, and then we are going to compete in a few indoor meets to get out of the boredom. Hopefully I should have 4-5 qualifiers for the state indoor meet, which is one of our smaller goals for the season.

I just got from New Jersey to see esteemed podiatrist Dr. John Connors who performed a noninvase foot procedure using some high tech ultrasound machine. I didnt mind the pounding throb of the machine so much as the 8 numbing shots that came out of an 18 inch needle that the doc poked from top to bottom of my foot. I actually turned green before I turned white and passed out this time! The foot is still a bit bruised from the shots, but I dont have any pain in the toe area, so hopefully I will be back jogging once again around the New Year. Knock on wood there will be no more long layoffs.

Thats about it on this end. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

tim

A Long Fall Back to the Top

2007-12-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

As every post of mine begins, I will start off with an apology for my lack of updates. My only excuse is that these kids have worn me out. I will start off by giving a quick rundown of how the season finished up, then a quick update on whats currently happening and finish with what I have planned for the next few weeks.

I had two primary goals for the season: a personal best for every runner and to qualify for the state meet. I was fairly confident that every kid would pr, but the state meet was a bit of a long shot, ecspecially considering the school has not had an individual nor a team qualify since I was running in 1994! But, I have always set lofty goals for myself.

One thing that I quickly found out about most high school runners is their lack of consistency. I think part of that has to do with asking them to race twice a week for 2 plus months and the other is just a typical lack of concentration. I was fortunate to have 3 solid and consistent on the front end, but as most know, it takes 5 to win. As the season unfolded, I found it very difficult to keep them all on their A game every weekend.

On the varsity side, we went into the the conference meet as the 4th ranked team against 3 other teams who were ranked top 25 in the state, and that is where we finished. Every kid pr'd. The big suprise though, was that my quiet group of fresh/soph kids came out and won the the fresh/soph race! Every kid on that team pr'd and freshman Alec Gonzales became the first East Peoria cross country conference champ since 1994!

The next weekend was our Regional meet, and we were coming in ranked 2nd (and actually ranked 23rd in the state, a first in a very long time) against the 3rd ranked team in the state. My only goal for this race was to qualify for the next weekend, the sectional meet, which qualifies you for the state meet. As I watched the race unfold, it looked like we had ran pretty well. After the race I wandered back towards the finish and on the way I got several congrads and well dones. Come to find out, we had actually beaten on the of the best teams in the state (a bit of a fluke, but I gladly took it), and in the process won the Regional meet!!! The girls side won as a team as well, making it the first time in school history. The best part about the whole day was that one of the dads told the team before the race that if they won he would take us all out to the best steak joint in town!

I tried to keep a lid on the excitement of that weekend, knowing that we had a big task ahead of us. Our sectional had 9 of the top ranked 25 teams in the state, and I guessed we were right around 6th give or take a spot. Top five qualify. Although it had been a long shot from day one, I had convinced the kids it could be done. There is not a better feeling in coaching then when you have a team full of athletes, who one year before had not a lick of success, who are totally focused on one singular goal; qualifying for the state meet.

From my position, it looked like we had ran really well. Top five looked certain. Every kid was right where he needed to be. When I got back to camp everyone was smiles. We had run as good as we could have. It was a long wait for the results, and when they came I was in shock. Every kid had run a pr and we ended up 7th, 2 places and ten points out of qualifying. I admit that it was the first time since my freshman year that I got choked up about running. To see a group come so far and come up just short was a bit of a heartbreaker, ecspecially for the seniors who had a new found passion for the sport. The bright spot was that senior Shane Leiby finished 10th and qualified as an individual, the first for EP since 1994. What impressed me more than anything was that after their cool down, I heard them all talking about how much they were going to be running over the winter.

Shane went on to finish 62nd at the state meet. Not to shabby for a 50 sec quarter miler who had never done much of anything in cross before. He had 8 teammates running the warm-up, race and cooldown with him shirtless and painted in school colors. It was really nice to hear people talking again about EP cross country, a team that once was a real factor. Although it was a bitter-sweet ending to the season, I cannot put into words how proud I am of all these kids. They have seen first hand the benefits of sacrifice and hard work. I believe only good things to come from EP cross country.

A week later we had our steak dinner!

We are already in the building phase for track, and almost every kid from cross is out with us, minus the wrestlers (who are doing some recruiting for me). Due to ridiculous IHSA rules, coaches are not allowed to be with the athletes while they are practicing, so I will be a bit hands off until Jan 15. The nice thing is that I do not have to worry about who is showing up and who is not. They all want to be there, and they all want to be running at that state meet next year!

On a personal note, I will be flying to New York to see Dr. John Connors to have one last shockwave treatment done next week. Hopefully this will be the end of the toe pain and clear the road for my preparation for 2008.

2007-11-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

August 29, 2007
Hello all. First off, my apologies to everyone for my lack of updates over the last three months. I have no other excuses other than these kids are wearing me out! Actually, it has been a very productive summer. For the first time in East Peoria X/C history that we have actually been training! I am not exactly sure what I said to con teenage boys to get out and run six days a week, but most of them have been doing it (at least that is what they have been telling me). I have been very lucky to have a lot talent from the freshman class all the way up to the senior group. But not only is there a lot of ability, there is also a very strong work ethic.

We began meeting a couple days a week towards the end of June, and just like I forewarned the boys back then, the season is already upon us. I found that it does not take a lot of work to get them out to practice, you just have to pay a little attention to them and show that you care. Although it sounds ridiculous, when I started bringing bananas and Krispy Kreme donuts to the long runs, they started showing up for the long runs (silly them, they could have just slept in and then driven over to the donut shop later!). When I started giving out In The Arena and adidas shirts for good work ethic, they started showing up for the workouts. I also noticed a big shift in attitude, especially with my varsity boys, concerning sleep and nutrition. Since day one, I have preached about living a healthy lifestyle away from the track. They used to roll their eyes and show up the next morning with bags under their eyes and two hours sleep. Now they show up on time and are doing the things they once scoffed at. Once that attitude began to permeate throughout the team, I was able to trust that most everybody would show up to practice, whether I was there or not. It is a truly a cultural phenomenon. My coaching philosophy has never been one of yelling and punishment. I am not a baby sitter. I want them to be there because they want to get better. I am just a teacher who is here to help guide, and at times motivate, them towards achieving their goals.

I came into high school coaching with a lot of ideas for workouts and training, but sorely underestimated their lack of training and preparation. I quickly realized that just getting them to come out and run six days a week was a challenge in itself. It was not that they were afraid of working hard; they just never understood that they have to run on a CONSISTENT basis to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves. That led me to another realization; most of them did not have any real goals, and the ones that did severely underestimated themselves. I have always felt one of the most important pieces to any athletes training program is having defined goals and at the beginning of every season. These are the things we use to focus on when we are tired and do not feel like finishing a workout, or when we do not feel like getting off the couch and out the door to get the work done. One of my biggest jobs as a coach is helping my athletes figure out what they want to accomplish by the end of their high school running career. Many times we fall into the trap of thinking that success is measured by wins and losses, but that is the wonderful thing about running. Not everybody is going to be a state champ or even a conference champ, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot make a difference. Success is measured by you alone, and whether you feel you have accomplished the goals you have set for yourself. Once the kids started to realize that, they began to get more of a sense of accomplishment out of the races and workouts. This in turn has motivated them to race faster, set higher goals, and ultimately given them more confidence, not just in running, but in all aspects of their lives. It has taken me a while to figure out where each athlete’s goals and abilities are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are, but we are finally all on the same page.

Our first cross country meet is this weekend, and most of the local competition will be there. Although I really want to race well, I am trying to stay the course and continue preparing for our conference championship, and hopefully state meet. One of the biggest pitfalls, in my opinion, is that high school runners race way too often, and train way to little. How can one expect to be fully prepared mentally and physically at the end of a season when you have already raced 16 times in the last two months? It is a balancing act, but hopefully I will be able to figure it out.

That is the long story short on the team side of things. Like I said before, things have been extremely busy for me this summer. I have been meeting the kids for practice two hours in the morning, and meeting the ones that come to morning practice in the evenings. Because of ridiculous IHSA rules, I was only allowed to meet with the them on a limited basis over the summer (long story, and I could rant all day about it, but in my opinion, any time you can con a high school kid to get up at 7 every morning during the summer to run instead of sleeping until noon and then sitting in front of the television or computer, you should take every chance you get). I have also been traveling quite a bit, public speaking at nine different running camps throughout the Midwest and New England area. It has been a real blast to get out and teach kids all the lessons and things that I have learned throughout my running career. It has also been a great opportunity for me to sharpen up on my basketball, foosball, dodge ball, kickball, table tennis and card playing skills! It always amazes me how much kids look up to anyone who has made an Olympic team, whether you were gold medalist or dead last in your heat. They really love it when you take the time to run with them, sit down on a card game or even just answer a question that they have but were to shy to ask during the speech. That has been the most rewarding part of this coaching and public speaking gig; making a difference in kids’ lives. That encompasses not just their athletic careers, but their academics and the overall lifestyle changes they need to make to become successful at whatever they choose to do with their lives. The only real blunder I made this summer was giving out my Facebook and Myspace accounts to all the kids. Now I have half the country friending me!

On the athletic side of things, my running has finally started to round into form. Although I am not able to do any serious workouts just yet, it is really nice to be able to go out for a run and not have any pain in my foot or stomach. Being that I was not able to run for over 7 months leading into the 2004 Olympic year, I have all the confidence in the world that I will be ready for 2008, as long as my body cooperates. I have learned a lot of lessons since the last Games (mostly the hard way), and as long as I stay in one piece, I believe I can make some noise. Coaching and working with kids has given me a fresh outlook on life. It has been a blessing in disguise to step out of the obsessive and psychotic world of competitive world of professional sports and get back to the basics that got me to where I am today. I never realized the stress I used to place on myself both mentally and physically. I hope to take this newfound perspective back into my running career and start to enjoy it a little more instead of making it such a chore.
We are finally upon my favorite time of year: fall. That means changing leaves, cool weather, cross country season and most importantly hunting season. I will do my best to keep you posted, but it is soooo hard to get out of that tree once the season begins : )

Take care and my best to all.

Tim

2007-11-10T18:25:00.000-08:00

May 15, 2007
Well, we just finished the Men’s conference meet last night, placing a close 4th in a very competitive conference. Every distance kid ran a p.r. last night and I would have to say that the only disappointment was having my 3rd leg of the 4x800 running sub-par due to a strained achilles he acquired last week. We still ended up 2nd, but without him at his best, we will not make it to the state meet next week. I am just crossing my fingers that a miracle happens and things turn around in a real hurry. On the bright side, my 4x400 relay won going away and broke a 50-year old school record. Talk about a bunch of screaming, smiling seniors. I didn’t know that boys could get that emotional! I had a freshman run a p.r. in the fresh-soph 4x800 and come back in the mile and break five minutes for the first time in his life. He was more excited than I was winning any national title! All in all, it was a very gratifying evening.

The three girls that I coach are running at the Sectional meet tonight, which qualifies them for the state meet. Two of them, one a senior (Mary Kate Beyer) and the other a sophomore (Emily Gustafson), are running the two-mile and should make it in pretty comfortably, barring any mishaps. Both have already run the qualifying time twice this year, notably last week where they went 1-2 at the conference meet. So knock on wood all goes to plan. My other girl (Cassie Lohmeir) is running the mile, where she finished 2nd last week at the conference meet running a state qualifying time of 5:17 (a p.r.), after running another personal best and state qualifier in the 800 in 2:20 40 minutes prior. Not too shabby for a freshman that starts varsity basketball and softball as well. She is probably one of the most talented kids I have ever seen and I predict she’ll be a national caliber runner by her senior year.

As an athlete, racing never made me that nervous, but I have to admit, I am not sure how much more stress I can take as a coach as we get later into the season. It has been a real pleasure and learning experience this first track season, and no matter what the outcome is tonight or next week, I am extremely proud of every one of my athletes. The smiles that I have seen on their faces after a win or personal best has made me feel better than any race could ever have done for me. Being with these high school kids has reminded me of a lot of things that I have forgotten, like running for the pure enjoyment of it and racing just to do my best. Hopefully I will get another crack at it in the near future.

On a side note, my truck was vandalized after a team dinner two nights ago. [Ed.: See above photo.] I have a sneaking suspicion who it was, but I just hope that the finger paint all over my windows comes off relatively easy, especially the hearts. I’m driving a full-size pick up for God’s sake! Also, the fish are biting like crazy (pre-spawn) and two giant toms (turkeys) outsmarted me yesterday. I am now off to speak at the Mayor’s Breakfast and have absolutely no idea what I am going to say or talk about. Wish me luck.

Tim