Outdoors Has Begun

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!