Actually, haven't been asleep. Just seriously underestimated the amount of time that coaching high school cross county would take. With a couple of hours devoted to practice every day, writing schedules, tracking times & spits, and meet entries. Then, most weekends traveling to a meet. Turns out it takes a lot of time to take care of a bunch of unruly high school harriers.
But, now that the season is behind us - the Buzzard has some time to get caught up on things. First off, a few musings from recent activities.
Loved the mudfest that was the Montana Cup. For the first time in the meet's history mud was the dominant theme of the day. And, I loved it. Mud-caked legs, globs on your face and in your hair - ahhh, it was glorious. You could tell who had the fastest times by the size of the rooster tail running up their butt and back. (For me - little rooster tail equal slow time. But, hey, I was happy to have had enough back kick to at least get a bit of mud on the back of the jersey:-). Sometimes we just have to go with the little victories.)
The New York City Marathon was last week - three words about the race ............................................... Meb, Meb, Meb. Keflezghi is the first American to have won the race since Salazar in 1982. It was almost shocking to see him pull away from the best africans in the last couple of miles. Equally shocking was seeing the top 3 pull away from Paula Radcliffe in the final miles of the women's race.
Now, there are those that will say that Meb isn't a real American. That's he's just a transplanted African (Meb was born in Eritrea). I'm throwing the bull-shit flag on that one. There was a post on Let'sRun.com that perhaps sums it up best - basically it said that here is a family that left their war torn country in search of a better life for their children. If that isn't the American dream, then we've really lost our way (the post at this link: http://http://www.letsrun.com/2009/navyMeb1105.php )
Did anyone else see how Heidi Turner flew past Alexa Aragon at the Class AA state XC championhsips? It was a fantastically executed race by Turner. As were the team races by the entire Bozeman boys and girls teams. On the boys side, they were nowhere to be seen at the first mile. But, with 800 to go, the front of the field had been transformed to a sea of black and red. Kudos to the Hawh coaches and athletes.
Mike Asay and Gavin Owens are clearly the class of the HS boys distance runners. Both dominated the smaller divisions and would have definately been capable of winning at the A and AA levels.
Kelli Dennehy of Butte - there's a stud. She doesn't run a meet all year due to IT band issues. But, in spite of that, she still holds on for a solid third place at the state meet. Couldn't quite pull off the Alec Brekke miracle from a couple of years ago; but, still - pretty damn gutsy run.
Back to the Montana Cup - John Zombro and the Bozeman crew did a great job of putting on the event. Too bad we had some course and technical issues that wrecked havoc with the results. But, the race committee will take these snafus, use them as a learning tool and tighten up some rules and protocols to hopefully avoid this in future editions. But, in the end - the race met it's overall goal. It brought together the best runners in the state in a friendly, competitive environment.
That's probably it for now. The Buzzard's wings are tired after not having posted in so long. Need to get back in the grind and get my feathers used to hitting the keys again.
See you on the roads, tracks and trails.
The Muddy Buzzard
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