The Real Resurgence

Hello, one and all. There's a lot of updating to do, and when one of your two favorite bloggers is back-5ing in Vermont and your other is takin' his date, well, it's time to hear about some meets.

On Monday, the 7th of February, the coach bus did indeed arrive to ship our tuchus' up to the Armory, unlike the debacle for the Frosh/Nov meet. Zach Iannarelli, our only entrant in the 3200, was removed and put into the 1600, more on him later.

In the 800 metres, the entrants were shocked to discover Steve Omari ran 2:08, Josh Elkan ran 2:09, and Frank Zhang ran 2:16. Post-race predictions compelled them to think 2:04-05 neighborhood.

In the 1600 meters, Tony Quad dropped a 4:42, a blazing time for a man of his intelligence. Gatsby, in his last track race of the year, ran 4:56. Wang ran 4:57. However, Russell Beatty, a man of great consistency, ran 5:10. I tell you, not even the great Hicham El Guerrouj could run a distance of 1600 meters with the regularity that our own boarder can.

The ride home was quite memorable as well, but I'll deprive you of those conversations.

We fast forward to February 17th, where the entire distance team competed at a Haddonfield invite. The results were fairly impressive. In the 800, Tony Chen ran a 2:04. Went out in 58. That'd be 2 PRs for me in one race. Blazin'. Nold won his heat in 2:14. Nice job, nice tie. Daniel Rodriguez also ran 2:14. Nice compression shorts. Where'd ya get 'em, Ben Helfand's basement?

In the 1600, Damon Glatz ran an excellent race for being out half the season, jumping a 4:36. Steve Omari and Josh Elkan followed close behind. In the next heat, my homeboy Tyler Russ made his first official dip under the 5:00 mark. It's the goatee. Also congrats to Ben Dillon who, unquestionably, broke 5 this time. Adam Green and Mike Minion had great races, running 5:04s. Walder ran in the 5:20 area, not a bad day. The true resurrection of Rob Cooper took place as well.

Photographers were thrilled to capture this striking image from the 16.

In the final event of the day, the main event, the whole kitten caboodle, the two featured East Distance teams consisted of Team Compression Shorts aka Team Walder's Three and Kevin Walder (Mike Wang, Daniel Rodriguez, Chris Arnold, Kevin Walder) versus Team China (Ricky Zhao, Matt Burt, Josh Elkan, Frank Zhang). The rivalry was especially hyped since Josh had been on Team Compression Shorts before disagreements on lower-body garments occurred. The heavy favorite, Team CS and leadoff man Mike Wang took this bad boy out hard, and had a sizable lead coming in to pass off to el DJ. However, when Josh took off, things started to turn around for Team China (three of whom actually have some relation to China). China moved out of last, and into 5th. Josh saw Chris Arnold in his sights but knew he could not possibly take him. However, due to his stunning and breathtaking 4x400 team management, wildcard Frank Zhang "walked" down anchor Kevin Walder to secure 4th place in one of the more heated 4x400 battles of the decade. What can I say, the better team won.

Well, MOC is today so more on that to follow. Other than that, keep on runnin'...