Return of the Bloggist: Dan White Recaps Pre-Nationals – Ohio State Buckeyes
10/27/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
Let’s get to it. No need beating around the bush, I realize this blog post is a bit tardy. I have fallen behind on things, but I’m a student-athlete first and a bloggist second. I am aware that this blog is the highlight of most of your weeks, but I will not apologize for having my services in such high demand. Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking: “Dan, if you were a professional writer you would have deadlines that you would need to hit. You couldn’t procrastinate like this in the real world and expect to get paid!” Well, guess what? I could, and I would get paid by the truckload. People would buy my books regardless. They would probably wait outside Barnes and Noble for weeks. You can’t put a deadline on genius. You think Hemingway answered to Scholastic? No.
Now I’m not comparing myself to Hemingway because he never blogged. He probably would have, but the technology wasn’t available yet. All I am saying is that if Hemingway ever did have the chance to blog and he happened to attend the Pre-Nationals race in Terre Haute, it would sound a lot like this:
Ernest Hemingway: bloggist extraordinaire?
Friday, 10/15/10
We left Columbus on Friday morning for the NCAA Pre-Nationals race in Terre Haute, Ind. Volunteer coach Jeff See was unable to attend the trip. This was a major blow to the team as Jeff’s experience at the Pre-Nationals race could have benefited us greatly because he has a good understanding of the Pre-Nationals style of race. He is a very savvy racer and knows exactly how to run the course with an eye towards peaking during championship season. Don’t believe me? Here is a link to last year’s results (scroll down to 165th): http://www.gosycamores.com//pdf4/649472.pdf.
We could have used that type of fire-power this year.
The team arrived at the Pre-Nationals course around 4:00 p.m. for our routine shake out. Everyone has run this course before, so it was nice to not have to worry too much about learning something new. The course has historically run pretty fast and after seeing how hard the ground was, we figured this year would be no different. The guys ran the course (five miles) and then stretched and did strides. We finished around 5:30 p.m. and returned to the hotel, stopping on the way home to pick up dinner. The rest of the night was spent watching television and getting geared up for the race. I bought my pre-race Snickers (a tradition I picked up from Cory Leslie) at the BP across the street.
Race Day, 10/16/10
The team woke up on race day around 8:00 a.m. and shook out for an easy 10 minutes or so. We returned to the hotel and ate the complimentary breakfast. Everyone is usually pretty nervous on race day, but Adam Green and Cory Leslie usually do a good job of loosening everyone up. We left for the course around 10:00 a.m. for the race at noon.
The Pre-National invite is always a difficult race. There are hundreds of runners from the best schools around the country vying for whatever points they can manage towards national qualifying scoring. A point is earned when a team beats an eventual NCAA qualifier at a regular season meet. Points are what usually determine the at-large bids to the national meet. The team was hoping to get a point or two from this meet. However, our program has historically relied more upon our performances in championship season for qualifying points.
The race went off at noon and I caught as much as I could. Unfortunately, I had to race later so I wasn’t able to run around quite as much as I would have liked. Here is what I saw:
The pack got out fairly well together. The plan was to start a little more conservatively than usual because the hundreds of runners at Pre-Nationals usually begin the race at a fast tempo. The team got out where they wanted to be and started moving up the pack. Led by Chad Balyo and Adam Green, the pack ran aggressively through 4000-meters at which point Julian Meyer and Cory Leslie checked off the group. Adam was able to hold on a little longer, but ultimately only Chad and Donny Roys were able to maintain their momentum through the second half of the race.
Overall, the team finished 13th. It wasn’t as high as we were hoping and the team is certainly capable of performing a lot better than we did today. However, Donny ran perhaps the best race of his young career and finished 40th in 24:21, the top Big Ten finisher in the race. Terre Haute has been a good course for Donny and he ran a strong race at this meet last year as well. Chad had a quality day, running 24:28 for 53rd. Although he didn’t run quite as well as he did a few weeks ago in Madison, his experience shows in his consistency. Julian finished third for the team and 80th overall in 24:45, while Adam and Jake Edwards rounded out the scoring for the team. Taylor Williams ran impressively for his first race back from injury. He will no doubt be ready to go when the Big Ten, regional, and NCAA meets roll around.
It is officially championship season and the team needs to adopt a new attitude and mentality to perform up to our expectations over the coming weeks. One of the points of pride the team has in our program is the ability to really come through and ‘bang’ comes championship season. I have a lot of faith in these guys and I think this year will be no exception. While Pre-Nationals may not have gone exactly how we would have liked, we will rebound October 31st at the Big Ten championships in Madison, Wis. As I always say, man is not made for defeat.
