meets
in Kaskaskia College Cross Country &meets by coach mike on 07 Oct 2011
What a meet. What a hilly place. What a baseball game. If everybody was as tough as Chris Carpenter the world would be a better place. But I’m thinking maybe we got some runners on this team that might be as tough. I don’t have any times yet, can’t find the results, but times don’t tell the story anyway. Today as Bruce likes to say is about attitude. What is your attitude or mind set about a race like today. Or about a course like today. I not sure I have seen a tougher 5K. Plus with the temperature warmer it made it even tougher. But what a neat place. What a neat place to go to school at. What a beautiful area. I hope that the kids took notice of the scenic beauty. The cliffs, the mighty Mississippi, the trees that were starting to turn their fall colors, just God’s handy craft for miles. Back on track, what about this attitude thing, what is he talking about. Well let me try to explain, and remember its 11:30 pm and I should be in bed, you are trained and ready to race, maybe not as well trained as you should be but at least in better shape than most. At least you are prepared. So when you get to and see a place like this, you can freak out and start to make excuses. Which is ok to a point, but if you just keep freaking out, because its too hot, too many hills, don’t feel good, too many hills, bad thoughts going through your young brain about how poorly you are going to run, then that is what you will do run poorly. So you have developed your race attitude, I’m going to suck! And guess what you probably will. Now on the side of that coin, you look at the pluses, I have been training, I have myself prepared and I have been racing well. This is not my first rodeo. I have seen hills before, matter of fact I have ran hills before. So now your attitude is “bring it” what does this course have that I can not conquer? I’m going to go out and try to kick the butt of this course and see if it will bites back! So now you have a fighters’ attitude, the attitude of a young warrior, the attitude of a Chris Carpenter. I’m not sure if you get what I’m trying to say, except we just want you to look at things as a challenge but with the mind set of taking the challenge on, of saying hey its going to be tough out there but you don’t scare me! From here on out, its post season, I love post season, I love conference meets, I love a challenge. Is facing a challenge about winning, not necessarily. In our case on the men side, post season is about running our best race as a team at Charleston on October 28th, it about trying to get someone in the top ten, about lowering our times, can we win the meet, most likely almost totally the answer is no. We don’t have the horses! Our times can not drop enough to win as a team. But our attitude needs to be…….”we may not be able to win but you sure are going to know we were here and we sure are not going to back down!” That is all we ask as coaches, at the Region 24 meet give us all you got, make yourself proud of your effort, run your best times of the year. We have a couple of weeks of training, so we just keep working hard, do what we ask you to do and then bring the tough hard nose attitude, that attitude of “you might be faster than me, but you aren’t going to beat me!” If you don’t understand that come see me and I will explain.
Now to the women as I ramble on at 11:57 pm, I have to be at the campus between 6 am and 6.30 am to help with 5k for Suzie, feel sorry for me? Women, the boat you are traveling on is a tad different. But your attitude needs to be the same. Why different? You’re knocking on the door, ever so lightly, the door of chance. The chance at and I hate to say it, but the chance to ……………………I can’t say it, I need to change my attitude. Ok the chance to bring it home as they say, the chance to be in the hunt, the chance to win the deal. There I said it, with a great race as a team, with a healthy Keatyn, a rested Elizabeth, the number 4 and 5 moving closer to our front pack, we could win the Region 24 meet. Like I said you are knocking so gently on the door, saying here we are Kaskaskia College, we would like to come through and see what is on the other side of the door. Will Danville, Lincoln, ICC let you come through and play? Or will Danville slam the door shut in your faces and say you aren’t ready come back later. This is where attitude comes in again, don’t knock gently, kick the sucker in! How do you kick the door in? By racing as a team, by moving our back group up closer to the front, its going to be our pack or packs against their front runners. Danville is going to have the front runners, our 1-5 and 1-7 would be better have to be in front of their second group. In a small number race, ever place counts, one place could be a 3 point swing and 3 points can make the difference in a small race. I will never forget when my girls and boys both lost conference by 3 points. The difference of getting past heading into the shoot. Attitude…..NO ONE PASSES ME, I PASS PEOPLE, THE COURSE WILL NOT DEFEAT ME! I AM HERE TO RACE!
Goodness………….we had two in the top 15 today, so they got T shirts. Mallory continues to amaze me, she works hard in practice, she races like a warrior. Josh same thing, works hard, worked hard during the summer, races to beat people. The other 5 men ran as a group, we encouraged them to take the first mile a little slower and then to race the next two tougher. I’m not sure how that worked out, we were expecting better probably but it was a good workout and we are getting stronger. The women, we were with out Elizabeth today, she was under the weather, or maybe just worn out, she is going to school, running cross country and working a night shift job at a nursing home and had been up almost 30 hours, she would of came with us, I told her to go get some sleep. Keatyn was not going to run on this course, attitude is one thing, a bad back, hip is another, coaches told her no. So the rest of the gang went out and picked up the slack. Thought we had some good efforts out of Toni, who was jumping right over those bales of straw or hay, Toni is not a hiller, she is not built to run hills, this is my attitude not hers, she will be ready for the course at Charleston. Trisha battles everything, whether its a tough course or a tough class subject, Janelle had her best race of the year, not based on time, but based on effort and attitude. (you should have some farm animals, goats, chickens, pigs and dogs) and based on how she practiced this week. Chelsea, started well and then had problems. Her and I had a couple of nice talks after the race. I’m readjusting her mental mind processing brain waves as far as racing goes. She has improved so much from last year and has become a key element in the importance of this team, which I trying to load into her brain. It is now 12:36 am. I will get back to this later this weekend, need to work on the thought patterns of the men some more. Later……but good job to day on a tough 5k. Thanks to Steve for a safe ride. Thanks to Bruce for another good day and if you get a chance, his bio is on the school web site now, no picture, thinking about putting one of George Clooney there! And we have picture of the this years team up now. I will post results as soon as I get them. Also Bruce has stuff on campusnet as well. Good night and remember its ATTITUDE………BIG MEAN TOUGH ATTITUDE.
in Kaskaskia College Cross Country &meets by coach mike on 04 Oct 2011
Ok Bruce, when is a detour not a detour? When the detour is BLOCKED! Around and around we go, where we get off the GPS has not idea!
The trip down was smooth, except for a little bit of a late start. Of coarse two miles after we passed the last rest area for another 58 miles on I64 toward Evansville or was it on the other side of Evansville, doesn’t matter, there is nothing on this road, the exits are bare! Someone had to pee real bad, funny how no one has to pee real good, and in a biology sense of things peeing is good, good for you, because if you can’t pee, then you are in big time trouble. So someone and I won’t name names, but she went to Centralia High School (Chelsea), had to pee, there is nothing at any of these exits, these are the exits that if you get off them and drive down the road, well you see this stuff in the movies! You are never seen or heard from again! Well we finally made that last rest stop, but Bruce “The Legend” and I decided we stop at all rest areas for now on! Well with in reason, we won’t stop in the first mile, but after that we are stopping, because needing to pee real bad needs to be taken care of. The Cardinals lost and are down 2 games to 1 now, just threw that in to see if anybody is reading. Thanks to Bruce “TL”( I’m getting tired and I still need to sweep the floors) and his GPS we made it across the Ohio River to Louisville. Also made it to the Red Roof Inn, now I thought the Roof was an ok place, one of the girls’ room had a few ants, but they weren’t in the bed, so they weren’t bothering anyone. We then went to try to find the course, it was already over cast and getting dark, but I wanted to see where we needed to be in the morning for the race. Well for some reason most of parks down there are the Tom Sawyer Parks, proceed by a couple of letters, like EP, DG or something like that. Well the GPS only had one of them listed under parks and it was not the correct one, so here we go, another crazy adventure with Mike and Bruce! Should be one of those shows like Surviving with Mike and Bruce. I take top billing because I invented getting lost on cross country trips. Crystal Lake or Silver Lake, anyone remember that one? Probably not but there are T shirts out there! Just ask Selmaville Rockets parents, I had kids racing from their parents cars to get to the start line, and we still placed top 3 as a team maybe we won I can say that because no can check it out! Anyway back to Louisville, I’m sorry I did not get you to the course in time to get to know it, the rest of the season, I will get you there! Unless we get lost! So we found the place and headed back to the Roof and to get some food because country boy was having hunger pains! Well we settled on the Olive Garden, kids wanted to eat there, I was ok with it, it was with in walking distance of the Roof, did you know York always stayed at the Roof in Peoria. The problem with the Olive, is the cost, when you only get $6 to eat, you might be get be able to get some water and garlic beard. But I understand wanting to eat in a nice place. So there we are, service was good, for some reason I’m just not a big fan of their food anymore, so I had soup and salad and garlic beard, and water with a lemon. Back to Roof for bed time. I sure wish the Cardinals had won, hope they win Wednesday. My Vicky is getting home tomorrow, Wednesday, she has been in NJ since the 18th with Audrey and Eliza. I know its going to be real hard on her leaving her girls! Its been real hard on me not being around them. Everybody got up with no issues and found some breakfast, next time I need to forgo the Roof and get a place with FREE breakfast. Just another thought, girls why do you think its important for me to know all your private details, you know what I’m talking about! Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about! We load up and head to the meet, we think we are getting there early, WRONG AGAIN, we get the extra parking area and have to walk, not that far, but the one lot was full of some of the biggest charter buses, we have ever seen, we could of put our “bus” inside some of these buses and still have room to host Mal’s prom. I think maybe country boy could put his whole town in some of these buses. I bet some of those big ones have a bath room with a hot tub in them! I have never seen so many runners in one place, I thought Bruce “TL” was going to have a heart attack! I thought he was going to line up in one of the unattached boxes! I know I was excited! We were real proud of our kids, our kids from the corn fields of Illinois! They didn’t back down, raced with a lot of pride and that is all you can ask as a coach. Give us what you got! After the races and the pictures, which brings me to a another point, THANK YOU PARENTS, THANK YOU FOR DRIVING DOWN TO WATCH US RACE! We headed home, we found a good place eat just down the road, had a Subway, KFC, Wendy’s to eat at. Then we started the trip home, and the DETOUR FROM HE (DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS). I think if we would of went maybe 265 west, we would been ok, but Miss GPS didn’t tell us to go that way, so we are on 265 east, looking for I65 North to get over that old Ohio River. The kids had no idea, they were watching some movie, we didn’t have a hot tub in our little bus, but we had a TV screen and tape player (did that on purpose, I know its a CD or DVD player!) At one point Bruce “TL” tells me that if we come to another blocked exit, we are going to run it, ramp into the river and float across! He’s kidding………I think, I hope he was…..anyway we finally exited and went back the other direction and across. Just another chapter in the book. Next rest area we came to we stopped and then we stopped at the next one as well. Got see super gymnast Dirty attempt his super what ever back something or other flip again for the 100th time! Maybe the cheerleaders can use him after the season. I think we made it back to Salem around 6:30, and action Jackson kept his shoes on, not sure but I know we must of because I’m at this computer and its Tuesday. I hope none of you are still up, its getting late. I know my wife is going to cry when she leaves tomorrow and so is my daughter, my grand baby probably won’t, maybe she will. I’m about to crying thinking about it. I miss seeing her, I hope they move closer to us. I’m thinking about ending this post, and I’m probably not going to proof it. (I did) You know we only have 3 more meets, only a few more weeks together.(now I’m upset again) so far we have had some very good memories and you know when it is all over, that is what is important about this little journey we are taking together. The friendships, the teammates, family, the memories. Louisville is now part of our memories, the ants in the room, crossing the river, running the race, the Roof, the Olive, the families, the GPS, teammates, so cherish these memories whether they be bad or good! Enough Good Night! Bruce, just wondering were we going to ramp the river???????? That could of been real cool! PROBABLY NOT. One last update the heading is provided by Dave Ashby, a real Lu a Vul boy!
in Kaskaskia College Cross Country &meets by coach mike on 04 Oct 2011
Now that was a cross country meet. Not sure how many teams were there but there was a bunch. Where else can you go and see so many D1 schools. Michigan women won the Gold division. I think Purdue men won the other side of the Gold division. We raced well in the Silver division. Mallory and Elizabeth raced well, working together and almost broke into the 20 minute range. Keatyn running on nothing but pure guts and heart raced extremely tough. We saw movement in our 4,5 and 6. And that is what will make us a better team, how much can 4,5,6, and 7 move up toward 1,2, and3? That is a big question. We talked about that in practice today. As a team we are only as good as the 4,5, 6 and 7 runners. No pressure, but if Toni moves her game up the rest will forward. Toni you can do it, we know you can and we know you will because when the real big races come Toni will be ready! Believe! Ms Miller keeps getting better every race, its all about trusting your self to handle the pain. Trisha battles, battles and battles and always has a good racing attitude. Also Janelle has started to figure things out, I know this because her last two practices have been so much better. Mal and Liz keep leading the way, Keatyn I know how tough you are, now we just have to keep you healthy. Toni, Chelsea, Trisha, and Nell keep moving things up…..and all of you, as a team, might make some history! Blue Angels XC!
Good old Josh, he is a hunter you can tell, he is always looking for that next victim, remember the old saying ” if you are going to run with the big dogs you have to get off the porch!” Well Josh is off the porch and ready to hunt! Going to see his times keep dropping. This was Dustin’s best race since the Nationals last year, he was running with purpose, he was pissed off at coach, so he took it out on the course. Guess I’m going to have to piss the Dirty Sparta boy off more often. Everybody look so much better at this race, action Jackson got his time under 30 minutes, he is looking stronger as well and then fixer Nixer had his best time in a year, thumbs up to Nix, and so did Mr Goff. I was just happy to see Cory able to finish a race, he has a string of bad luck for almost 3 years. Mr Goff is coming around, except for an injury in practice today, he is looking stronger, hope this is just a minor set back, he needs some good luck as well. Now Brandon had a tough day, he was racing well, he started to heave, hurdle, throw up, puck or what ever you want to call it and then got knock down., so he was not able to finish the race. Sad thing was his dad had came down to watch him. Not sure what caused his problem? He might of eaten too much breakfast. But he will bounce back. We have only 3 more races, but the big ones are coming up, the ones to get excited about, the ones you want to see how well you can do! So lets have good practices, lets stay healthy, lets take care.
I’m just wondering if some of those D1 schools, will start to avoid us, so not to be out done by the Angels and Devils of Blue! Go KC.
in Kaskaskia College Cross Country &meets by coach mike on 29 Sep 2011
There are now 3 men and 3 women races. We are in the number 3 races. The men race at noon and the women at 12:30. This is called the silver race. There are 44 boxes listed and 42 or 43 different schools. Remember the start times are eastern times, one hour ahead of our times. The races are held at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville.
in Kaskaskia College Cross Country &meets by coach mike on 06 Sep 2011
Mile repeats today. Looked strong. Also tried a different cool down. Kenyan cool down. Just something different. Seem to enjoy. Just heard commercial on TV about tracking your pizza from start to finish. I don’t really need to know any of that, just cook my pizza, don’t burn it, and then let me eat it! Need some ideas for some community service, anybody have any? Good job with the miles today, Cowboy ran an extra one, I just love that. Baked Potato eat about an hour before practice, his Cheerios and peanut butter didn’t taste as good coming up. The young ladies also ran very well today, Elizabeth and Mallory ran very well, as did TT (Toni Thunder). Trisha looked strong, C-Sea keeps looking better, I’m looking for big improvements from her. Bruce was sporting his North Central Tee shirt. Miles to go! One another thought-I see some leadership stepping up on the men side! Good job Dirty!
in Kaskaskia College Cross Country &meets by coach mike on 04 Sep 2011
Click on the Photos heading above and I have a few pictures posted from Cowboy’s mom. Need some pictures of the women.