"I Found Rome Brick, I Left it Marble"...Weeks 3-5

Unfortunately, due to some technold difficulties, there has not been a blog post for the last two weeks. Fortunately, this post will cover all three previous weeks of practice, and it will be ridiculously longer shorter than the two previous tirades. Here we go.

The third week of practice started with the first out/back of the season on Monday the 9^th. While a large group of runners, led by the recuperating Sean “Octavius” Taylor, performed a minimum-distance out/back, Mike “Augustus” Minion, Michael “Constantine” Bruce, and Chris “Antony” Arnold went the distance for several more miles. Augustus finished first followed by Constantine and later Antony in a rather inconsistent run. The next morning, the groups split up into smurfers and hillers, accomplishing a much needed recovery day. On Wednesday, in weather that just slurped the sweat right out of one’s body, many teammates showed up to perform a rather difficult while refreshing run; Zach “Caesar” Iannarelli, an East Alumnus, went the full distance with  Augustus and Constantine. On a better note, the run on Thursday occurred with much greater success; the long group broke up into two packs, with Augustus and Constantine leaving slightly before Antony and John “Carus” Warkala. Although, the latter group took a wrong turn somewhere on the run, both groups finished successfully. On the  final day of the week, we completed a rather easy run on trails, finishing up a solid week. The runner of the week, due to his initiative as well as his ambition, is Vimalesh Vasu, the 2^nd freshman to be named this award. Vimalesh was the first freshman to obtain a watch to accurately record his runs, while he also was the first freshman to record a second run on Running-log. Nice job, Vimalesh.

The next week was rather disappointing entirely. I don’t even want to make a post for this week. But I will, simply omitting the runner of the week for this week (16^th-20^th) ; this week, the runner of the week was every single person  who may chance to beat us at our races by a small length, as the work he put in this week that we didn’t made the difference. On Monday, an out/back of last-week’s mileage turned sour from the beginning, with inconsistent pacing by the leader, eventually resulting in a negative split over the back.  At the outbreak of the back, Augustus and Mike “Commodus” Wang fell off, leaving Constantine to fall off of Ben “Trajan” Dillon shortly after. On Tuesday, Augustus, Constantine, and Commodus veered towards ET, all completing differing mileages in a tough recovery day. On Wednesday, while Augustus, Trajan, and Dan “Superbus” Helfand completed 3 roads run with great success, Constantine led Carus and Commodus into the Beagle club to accomplish quadruple hill in its inaugural running. By the run’s end, Commodus lost his compass and Carus stopped to panic; both fell off and were censured in different ways. On Thursday, Carus, Commodus, Constantine, and Augustus traveled to Holmdel Park to prepare for States. On a beautiful night to run, only Constantine and Augustus finished together, with Carus and Commodus bringing up the rear minutes later. Overall , however, a good workout was had and hopefully more Romans will attend next time. On Friday, only Christian “Gracchus” Mele, Constantine and Trajan shoed up to perform a wet but exciting run through Erlton.

And finally, last week our team saw much greater success; the runner of the week was Trajan, and you will soon read why. On Monday, Constantine, Trajan, Augustus, and Commodus left East for a second-to-last out/back of the season; although Commodus declined contention on the way back, Augustus led Constantine and Trajan all the way home in a very negative-splitted run. Nice job boys. On Tuesday, Constantine, Augustus, Trajan, Gracchus, and Carus, journeyed to find Commodus, actually meeting his mother but not him at his domain in Siena. Shortly on the way back from Siena, Gracchus and Carus fell off an easy pace. Nonetheless, everyone stayed on for Wednesday, a very odd day in which Trajan still showed up to, despite having already run in the morning. It was a rather inconsistent run and spanned over several floors, and although it was enjoyable, more seriousness can be injected into the next run on Wednesday. On Thursday, we once again split up into several groups, with Octavius leading group “Remus”  (Antony, Gracchus, Carus) and group “Romulus” consisting of Commodus, who would get lost, Augustus, Constantine, Trajan, the alumnus Caesar , and two other alumni by the names of Dave Berger and Steve Omari. Although Augustus, Constantine, and Trajan were slowed by basically El Niño (Thanks, DJ), they weather the storm and finished the long run together. In other news, Octavius trashed everyone in his group. Finally, on Friday, the same finishers of Thursday’s run, Trajan, Augustus, and Constantine completed a good trail run at Pennypacker, while Carus moved off the pack somewhere along the line. Nice job this week, Trajan, your attendance and good attitude have earned you this award without any doubt.

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