Some notes regarding the Berkshire Meet

Meet Review – Early Bird

Overall I was very pleased with the team as a whole.  I thought your spirit, attitude, and effort was inspiring.  The first meet is always exciting and a little nerve-wracking for everyone, so you handled the anxiety well.  Running with teammates like we do on workout day makes racing a lot easier – hopefully you found your group and worked with them!

A big lesson needs to be learned from this meet regarding scoring and how an inch can change a team place by a LOT!  Team scores are calculated by adding up the places of the top 5 runners from each team (only 7 runners are ever part of official results).  We finished tied for 5^th, but won the tie-breaker with Aurora because our 6^th finished higher than Aurora’s (thank you Mal).  Even more shocking was we were 1 point behind 4^th and one point AHEAD of 7^th…4 teams within 3 points of each other!  Many of you were close with other runners right at the finish line – imagine if you were passed by 3 people in the last straightaway how much that could affect our score and therefore the team place.  We easily could have been 4^th or 7^th just depending on such little things (like Maggie Wagner edging an AURORA girl at the line by .3 seconds!). 

I’m hoping after the first meet you can see why we emphasize getting longer mileage on our recovery days and pushing yourselves on your workout days.  You need to teach your body to run faster and further – get it more efficient in practice so you can race better!  I’m also hoping for you all to BUILD more confidence from week to week.

Some things to look for now that you have a race under your belt.

1.    Where are you on the all-time list?  (see the link on the team website) How far can you move up?

2.    How far up within the team can you run?

3.    Is lettering possible?  See the standards on the team website.

4.    Do you have a chance to make a mark on the class level records?

Also, be a little self-critical and consider what you can do better, not just in meets, but in your workouts, pre-race preparations, and mental effort.

Always, team comes first.  Please remember that every time you want to make a selfish decision regarding your training, behaviors, or interactions with others.

Go Jags!  Build!