Week 1: 6/25 - 6/29

Hello boys, this is Michael Bruce, your friendly neighborhood blogger, and I will be doing the first weekly write-up for our team. These posts will cover the outstanding Runner of the week, how our runs went, general themes as well as random information.

Week One began rather quietly on Monday night, the first day of practice; everyone came focused and prepared for a great season. After we rehearsed the freshmen’s names of which we soon forgot, we embarked on Minion’s run, a run that encompassed parts of nearly every run done in Cherry Hill; nice gmaping, Minion. Along with the returners of Minion, Bruce, Wang, Arnold, Warkala, and Sean Taylor, we embarked with the collegiate runners of Steve Omari and Tyler Russ. The pace of our first “long run” of the season remained controlled and we finished with nearly everyone, with Minion, Bruce, Wang, Arnold, Sean, and Steve all finishing together on a beautiful night to run.

Unfortunately, the next day we had off.

On Wednesday night, however, we got the freshmen off our backs and ran a confident but draining, hilly but short, run in Fox Hollow. Splitting up into two groups, group “Tiger Blood” encompassed Sean Taylor, Minion, Wang, Bruce, Joel Burt (who made a very welcome appearance following his sighting on Monday’s run), and Warkala. The other group ran slightly less, and included Arjun, Christian Mele, and Zucker . Nice run boys, for both groups. The highlight of the night, however, came with the discovery of Jack’s house, which for some reason was bereft of Jack, who for some reason is in Texas.

On Thursday night, everyone grouped up once again for another “long run”; however, this time we journeyed to Challenge Grove, on the outskirts of Cherry Hill. Once again, Joel made a welcome appearance, and we soon embarked on our run through the hills of Haddonfield on a hot day while Coach gave the freshmen a tour of the Pennypacker Cross Country Course. For almost all of the parties involved in group “diehard”, this was a rough run; we started out with Minion, Wang, Arnold, Sean, Bruce, Warkala, and Joel—several excuses later, we finished with Bruce, Minion, and Sean.  These are the types of runs in which we get better, boys. We need to do better next time.

Unfortunately, due to Lighting, which apparently is dangerous, AM practice was cancelled on Friday.

Fortunately, everyone saw enough out of Sean Taylor in the three days of practice in order that he be declared Runner of the Week. Sean was one of several runners to finish all of the runs this week with his group, even when he had to catch back up to do so. His mentality and drive are things that we can all learn from, and if he continues in his relentless pursuit of goals as he has so far, he will solidify his place on varsity without a doubt. Nice job, Sean.

Remember boys, off day Sunday and besides that, keep running.