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.
