Track Banquet

The annual end-of-season track banquet is this Saturday at 6:30 pm at the high school. If you are a member of the track team, you get in and get all the festivities, food and fun for free! If you are a parent, or a sibling, there is a nominal fee that goes towards the team budget. I hope to see everyone there, varsity athletes and JV athletes, as it is a very, very fantastic way to spend an evening!

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Uniform Turn-In

Calling all CHS track athletes!

If you are not racing this weekend, you need to trun in your uniform to Coach Hawk ASAP! Swing by his room anytime and make sure he gets it. He has been sitting in the cage every day after school waiting for both JV and Varsity athletes to turn in their equipment!

From our standpoint, the uniforms are very expensive and we care about them a great deal. They are property of CHS, not the athlete, and they need to be returned. Even if you are a senior. (Hopefully the seniors will realize that wearing their HS gear after they graduate is muy lame-o, so they don;t need to keep it.)

From your standpoint, I would hope that returning what is not yours yours would fall under the "right thing to do" category. So, turn in your equipment today!

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State Qualifier List

I am so proud of everyone's performance on Friday and Saturday. We prepared as best as we could and we got a lot of people "one more week of practice" It was a long, hard season, but we can't lose focus now. Below is a list of people who have a shot to do something very, very special. I can't wait to work with them starting Monday! The meet is at JeffCo Stadium, a very fast track, with a lot of history. Get ready to make some of your own!!

Girls 4 X 800
Kirsten, Kelli, Melanie, Katelyn with Caroline and Kelsey D. as alternates
Saturday 10:15 am

Boys 4 X 800
Alex, Derek, Taylor, Patrick with Shane and Kevin as alternates
Saturday 10:30 am

Girls Open 800
Kirsten
Friday 3:35 pm

Boys Open 800
Alex
Friday 3:50 pm

Sprint Medley
Jazmin, Kelsey G, Alexis and Amanda with Jordan and Karlie as alternates
Friday 9:40 am for prelims, Saturday 10:00 am for finals

Triple Jump
Paige and Kelsey G.
Friday 9:30 am

Long Jump
Kelsey G.
Saturday 12:30 pm

Shotput
Julia
Friday 12:30 pm

Discus
Julia
Saturday 12:30 pm

Pole Vault
Brandeis
Saturday 11:30 for weigh-ins

High Jump & Long Jump
Mike
Saturday 12:30 pm / Friday 12:30 pm

4 Ways to Deal with Race-related Fatigue

Someone sent me this article from the world wide web on how to combat the inevitable fatigue experienced in racing. I read them over a few times, and they make a lot of sense. We are going to talk more in-depth about these topics this week, but here they are:

THINK SMALL

READ SIGNALS

PRACTICE REACTING

ATTACK IT

Good cues to remember while running!

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Regionals Schedule

Below is the link for the Regional Championships schedule.

This is our most important meet of the year. If you achieve the pre-qual time for an event, you go to State. If you come in top three in your event, you earn a ticket to State as well. We are running great, when the weather co-operates, so let's hope for some nice weather for Friday and Saturday, cause we always run fast at this venue!

Regional Schedule
(Sorry about the weird formatting, but the info is all correct.)

Alumni Update

The collegiate track season is coming to an end, and we have many alums who ran really, really well this spring. We have one who is a collegiate champion though.

Steven Busch won the Great Lakes Valley Conference 3000 m steeplechase in 9:27 to become conference champion!

He also PR-ed in the 5000 m, running a 15:16 and coming in 5th. Awesome Job Steven, we are all wicked proud of you!

But Steve-O, just to keep you from getting a big ego, I want to see you to Red Rocks this summer. Gotta keep working hard to keep running fast!

Any other alums who are running well? Shoot me an email and let me know!

Uncle Leonhard

During one of the wind gusts that almost blew us over on Friday afternoon, DLaker asked me if I had a famous relative who was a dog-sledder. I most certainly did, I replied. Uncle Leonhard was the man who saved the town of Nome Alaska in the 1920's by bring them diphtheria serum via dogsled. It was a relay, but while most drivers did something like 50 miles, Leonhard did 340 or so. He was a hero to Alaskans, and he started up his own sled dog breed, Seppala Siberian Huskies, which is the picture in the upper left corner of the blog. He was so famous he toured the United States for a while, doing exhibition races and introducing people to the sport of sled dog racing.

He even won a silver medal in the 1932 Olympics for sled dog racing, although it was just a demonstration sport. (Although it is pretty cool a Seppala has won an Olympic medal!)

I have been lucky enough to go on a couple dogsled rides, and even at half speed, those dogs can really take you for a ride!

JV Championship Line-Ups

I have finally figured out who will run what at the JV Championships this Thursday at Littleton Stadium. I have front loaded everyone's events. I want people to focus on their first event and give it their all, as we might have bad weather later on in the meet that will hamper any racing. So, very few two-mile racers, and no 4 x 400 relays. Focus on the early open events, give it 110% there, as we can't afford to hold anything back!

I will be driving to the meet, but I will be there for the sprint medley. We will have a great day, a great culmination to a great season!

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Fantastic!!

I just want to comment on how unbelievable yesterday's practice was for the entire team. Coach Laster was working with the JV kids, and he said they did an awesome job. Coach Thomas and I were working with the varsity kids, and I can say they had their best practice of 2008, by far.

We did a really difficult ladder workout, starting with 400's at R1 pace, heading down and getting faster, until we ended back up at 400's faster than race pace. The awesome thing is, everyone was nailing those last sets of intervals, when they were supposed to be tired and struggling to get through them. I should have seen this coming, after the way we raced at Liberty Bell, but of course I didn't think about it that much. This shows me that the "training is working" and that we need to believe in ourselves when we get out on the race track. We have the physical tools to do amazing things, now we need to get them mental side squared away. We need to trust our bodies and trust our form, and we can finish this season running really, really fast. I smell records falling in the next few weeks, as we are on a huge wave and we need to keep riding it as long as we can!!

Birthday

I want to wish my awesome, supportive, tolerant, amazing wife a Happy Birthday. I simply couldn't do any of this track stuff, or anything else in my life, half as well as I do it without her support and love. She is the best.

I love you Beth. Happy Birthday.

League Champs Entries

The sprinting relays are still being hammered out by the powers that be in the sprinting department. but, I have the open events as well as some distance relays line-ups. More coming later today:

100 G: JEvans, Musso, AGrimm
100 B: Johnson, Otis, Brost
200 G: AGrimm, Musso, D'Agnostino
200 B: Scheuerman, Johnson, McPherson
400 G: Taylor, Bergen, Yeager
400 B: Barringer, Scheuerman, Brost
800 G: Lake, Hanrahan, Wojan
800 B: Balsiger, Burt, Maloney
1600 G: Hine, Dutton
1600 B: DEidt, Burt, Lake
3200 G: Hine, Dutton
3200 B: TEidt, Cottingham, Lake

100 H G: Larsen, Manley, Follett
110 H B: Batt, Calvert, Harris
300 H G: Larsen, Follett, Manley
300 H B: Batt, Calvert, Harris

HJ G: KEvans, Follet, Schmidt
HJ B: Calvert, Harris, McPherson
LJ G: KGrimm, AGrimm, Bound
LJ B: Johnson, McPherson
TJ G: KGrimm, Follett, Schmidt
TJ B: Calvert

SP G: Costin, Thurston, Casey
SP B: Raslawski, Crichton, Austin
Disc G: Costin, Casey, Thurston
Disc B: Maisen, Austin, Raslawski
PV G: Yovich, Dailey, Hughes
PV B: Whipple

4 x 400 G: JEvans, KGrimm, Lake, Wojan
4 x 400 B: Brost, Maloney, Abbey, Scheuerman
4 x 800 G: Hanrahan, Bergen, Lake, Wojan
4 x 800 B: Balsiger, TEidt, Abbey, DEidt

The sprinting relays will be forthcoming, check back later this evening!

League Time Schedule

I have been looking forward to this race since we first got the schedule in November. Friday night, League Championships, under the lights, in a brand new stadium. This is going to be one of the best meets I have ever coached at! I can't wait, we are going to run SO fast!! Start getting psyched!

Entries are still being sorted out, but the time schedule is linked to below:

LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIPS TIME SCHEDULE

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Canceling Meets??

(Ed. Note: I also posted this at Dyestat, maybe more people will see it.)

We just had our 3rd meet of the season canceled yesterday! I don’t understand why coaches and meet directors are so eager to cancel meets, especially living in Colorado where the weather changes ten times a day! The first meet that was canceled on us was canceled Friday afternoon before lunch! More than 18 hours away from start time!!! Are you serious, you don’t have a Home Depot in Colorado Springs that sells shovels? You don’t have a 100 kid track team and free Friday night? Shovel the track, dry the throwing areas, maybe cancel a few events, but not the whole meet! Or the next week, when we got all the way down to the Springs and halfway through, it starts snowing. After very LITTLE deliberation, the vote was to cancel the meet, even though six miles north of the stadium, it was sunny and beautiful. (After those two weeks, we decided to not attend any CO. Springs meets for a little while.)

Which brings me to yesterday, Liberty Bell. It starts snowing during the one hour lunch break. You know what that means... put it to a vote, and all the coaches vote to cancel the meet! (Bet you didn’t see that one coming.) Hinkley, Highlands Ranch, Smoky Hill, and before I could see anyone else’s vote, I had my miler out on the track warming up to do intervals. (More on that later.) I don’t get it coaches. You have dedicated your Saturday to being at the meet, why not wait until the scheduled lunch break was over, and then have a vote? What, you gotta get home to get yard work done? Or you really just don’t want to be there? Your kids have worked hard all season, they want to race. Why so eager to go home? Why coach, is that is your prerogative? It is a valid question, as the perception I have is that when the weather gets bad, everyone gets eager to pack up and go home. Any answers, coaches?

As for my miler, she got a great interval workout in, little snowy and windy during the warm-up, but after the first couple of repeats, the track started steaming up and fogging up, pretty cool conditions to do intervals on. Halfway through the work-out, no more snow, and the sun starts to come out. On the drive home, at 2:00, 41 degrees and climbing, no wind and sunny. And it stayed like that the rest of the day. Pretty good race conditions if you ask me, especially in the last meet before the “play-offs” begin.

That’s my rant, before coaches are so eager to vote to cancel meets, why not wait five minutes, the weather is sure to change!

Liberty Bell Line-Up

Good morning,

Below is the link for the schedule for the Liberty Bell Meet this weekend. It is a two day meet, Friday night and Saturday day.

LIBERTY BELL SCHEDULE

Before I get to the line-ups, I want to explain my reasoning behind them. (Not that I should need, to, but this is the "Y" generation.) With the events spread over two days, it allows us to run our best athletes in events that have the potential to score us the most points. The goal is to win as a team, not individual accolades. (Although those are nice.) At this point in the season, the coaches can arrange line-ups in order to maximize the team point totals, and that is what we have done this week. If everyone runs, jumps, throws to their potential, then the team will do well, and that is, and always has been, the ultimate goal.

Having said that, here are the distance line-ups for this weekend.
400 G: Taylor & Bergen
400 B: Schuereman, Brost & Barringer
800 G: Lake, Hanrahan & Wojan
800 B: Abbey, Maloney, TEidt
1600 G: Hine & Dutton
1600 B: Balsiger, DEidt, Burt
3200 G: Hine
3200 B: Balsiger, Cottingham, Lake
4 x 400 G: KGrimm, Larsen, Lake, Wojan
4 x 400 B: Brost, Maloney, Abbey, Schuereman
4 x 800 G: Hanrahan, Bergen, Lake, Wojan
4 x 800 B: Balsiger, TBD, TBD, DEidt

Now, we had a great meet last weekend at Nike, in fact, I am still getting congratulations for it. But, I think we can do even better. I think last weekend we raced great, but we have not hit our ceiling yet. I think that there are still a lot of faster times in us, just waiting to be unleashed. I think that we can use our heads and our hearts to slash our times even further. I think that we are strong enough to go out there and blow away the competition. So, let's do it, this weekend. I will take care of getting you guys ready to go physically, you have to get yourselves ready mentally, however you can. This is a top shelf meet, a fantastic meet to run fast, and a perfect meet to "slingshot" ourselves into the championships season!!!!

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UPDATE: The coaching staff made a few switches last night while we met at the JV race. Hanrahan will be taking Grimm's spot in the 4 x 400. That leaves KGrimm with LJ, TJ, Spt. Med (200) and 4 x 200.

FR/SPH Championships

Follow this link to see who is running which distance events in the FR/SPH championships this Wednesday afternoon at D.C. Stadium in Castle Rock. All coaches are going, so it should be a great afternoon!

FR/SPH CHAMPS

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