2016 KHSAA State Track Championships

2016 Track State Championships

Super proud of our TNHS track family. 
These kids weren't just happy to get to State - they rocked it! 

10 medals

Boys team 11th overall (3/4 of a point out of top ten and only fielding distance events), best local team and 2nd best team out of our very competitive Region 2. 

Girls pr'd (and set school records) in five out of six events

Jarrett was State runner-up in the 1600 and 3200!

Everyone crushed it. Love my Renegade track team.

KHSAA XC State 2015

TNHSXC makes history.  Team finished 9th (highest ever by a Nelson Co. School), Jarrett placed on the podium in 6th, Jarrett and Tyler both named KHSAA All-State Team.  Super proud of our entire program and the way they have represented the TNHSXC family.

Bourbon Chase 2015 - Ultra Speakeasies

Our second time running this 200 mile relay in the 6-person Ultra format.  With its relay format, the Bourbon Chase is one of my favorite events of the year.  Digging deep and pushing hard are a lot easier when you've got a team of guys relying on you.  We were missing a lot of firepower in Scott Breeden, Josh Heird and Troy Shellhamer.  But, we had Ryan Sheehan step up (our driver last year and former Hanson Brooks elite), and got a great contributions from Chicago's Tim Faith and Matt Thor.  Returning we had our Captain John King and Mike Meyer.  And, huge kudos to our driver - Jen.  She had the hardest job by far, and she rocked it. 

It was a blast as always with ups and downs, miles of smooth sailing and patches of compounding screw ups.  We battled at the front for a while, eventually got caught and passed by Troopers Bar and without even realizing what happened, got outrun by a team from the starting grid ahead of us - Omaha Omaha.  That's their team name, not some hip new saying I came up with.  As always, there were some great battles out on the road and some memorable moments in the van. It's a fantastic race allowing for hours of solo running down pitch black country roads, while at other moments racing shoulder to shoulder into screaming crowds late in the race.  Without a doubt, this type of racing provides the opportunity to push yourself as hard as you want while creating a sense of companionship rarely seen in our largely solo sport. We wound up winning the Ultra division for the second year in a row and ran 3rd overall with an average of 6:26 per mile.  

Below I posted the leg names, distances and ranks from the Bourbon Chase leg maps along with all of my Garmin data from the event.  I don't normally bore folks with stuff like this and rarely ever post workout brags or snapshots of my watch.  But, I trained really hard the past couple of months and plan to run faster yet.  I was happy to meet my goal of running all of my miles at my marathon goal pace - 40 miles - 5:59 average.  I'll take it. 

Glad to be done.  

Thanks Country Boy brewing  

Leg 1 - 7.4 miles, rated difficult, Outskirts of Bardstown.  5:39 avg. 

I live on this route, the school at which I teach is on this route and I get to train on this route.  I knew the key to a good overall performance would be holding back a little on this one.  Got the baton about thirty seconds back of a Runners Rye's guy.  Wound up running a 17:26 5k, and a PR 34:59 10k en route and didn't catch my guy.  Got right up with him on hwy 245, but considered the fact that I had five more legs to run compared to his two.  5:39's with 30 more miles on tap isn't exactly holding back, but it didn't feel too bad. 

Leg 8 - 4.8 miles, rated difficult, Striding Toward Springfield. 5:54 avg.

Remembered this booger from last year because of how poorly I ran it.  Held back on the climbs, of which there were many, and tried to just roll the rest of it.  Didn't see another person. Felt pretty good about the average and how I handled the first bit of hilly terrain.

Leg 14 - 6.6 miles, rated difficult, Standing Fort. 5:48 avg. 

This leg is another that I knew really well from previous years.  It's a lot of long highway grinders, then a turn into Stanford for a bomber downhill finish.  Felt very controlled and solid, again being conservative on the climbs.  

Leg 20 - 5.7, rated medium, Harrodsburg to McAffee.  5:55 avg. 

Literally straight down 127, and not nearly as difficult as the elevation profile makes is look (always look at the Y axis).  Got a little tight in the middle of this one, concentrated on my breathing and being economical as I possibly could.  Knew my next one was a beast, so I stayed safely far from that anaerobic threshold and just maintained.  

Leg 26 - 7.7 miles, rated difficult, Welcome to Horse Country.  6:19 avg. 

It was on this route last year that my wheels came off.  Full of short steep rollers, this route comes just late enough and has just enough climbing that it had me worried.  I again focused big picture and just survived all the climbing, got it back together for the downs and flats, and got it back down to something that looked like marathon pace.  

Leg 33 - 7.8 miles, rated difficult, Romancing the Mill.  6:15 avg.

Losing a teammate to injury forced us to jostle things around a little.  I was rather looking forward to my short 4.8 mile segment to wrap things up.  Instead I volunteered to take this 7.8 miler full of hills.  Mike got my 4.8 because he took on a whole extra leg at the end giving him 7 legs total.  Matt T. got a segment much harder, and Sheehan somehow got off easier.  It all worked out pretty well, and I pushed myself hard just to get through and not to let my pace come to a screeching halt.  Was pretty excited to see that I was back down to 6:08 for that last 3/4 of what wound up being my 40th mile.  I'll take it.

Thank you all who attended and volunteered at this year's Unified Running Camp.  We had over 60 campers representing TNHS, NCHS, Bardstown and Bethlehem.  It was a fantastic experience.  Enjoy a few of our memories...

TNHS Track & Field - State 2015

2015 KHSAA class 2A State. Since TNHS opened in 2012, track/XC has made six consecutive appearances at state. This year's contingent was by far the largest - led by Jarrett's 3rd place 1600 / 6th place 3200, the boys placed 18th. The girls well outperformed their seedings w tremendous performances. So proud of all these kids (see their results in the captions). Enjoy your short break - we're hungry for XC in 2015!

Look closely and you can see Jarrett and Tyler in the 1600 while Evelyn is going up in pole vault.

The girls 4x200 just made it in and were seeded 24th.  They PR'd, broke their own school record and placed 16th!

Jarrett got this guy in the 1600, he got Jarrett in the 3200.  Great battles. 

Tyler en route to a 4:43 mile.  And, that was an off day.  It was his first year running track and he qualified for State in three events!

Isaac, Justin and Jarrett.  Justin ran a strong second leg for his 4x800 team who place solidly in the top 15. 

So blurry because Maggie is so fast.  Beastmode!

Evelyn capped off an illustrious HS career with a PR of 8' in pole vault where she finished 10th!

These two have been racing against one another for years, and I started coaching Will when he was in middle school.  Best of luck to him as he heads to Campbellsville U next year where he will continue his running career. 

1600m podium where Jarrett place 3rd in 4:32!

This guy is already in his jacket because he put over 10 minutes on me in the last 10 miles!

Bourbon Chase 2014 - Ultra Speakeasies

October 10-11, 2014.  In this, the sixth edition of the Bourbon Chase, the Speakeasies would look a little different than in previous years.  Of course there would still be some bad facial hair, butt cheeks hanging out of speedos - sure, but this time there would only be one van full of assholes tackling the 200 mile course.  The Speakeasies run of dominance came to an end in 2013 when a super-stacked team waxed us by over thirty minutes (see last year's Bourbon Chase post).  We still had a great time, but the emphasis on putting together 12 guys, all super-fast, to contend for the win was less appealing than it had been before. Rumbles of contending for the ultra record began before the 2013 race was even completed.  The 2014 team slots (now that there were only six of them) filled right away.

Get to run twice as many legs within the same time frame?  Hell yeah.  I was in.  So was team captain, brewmeister, bourbon barrel/barnwood artist, a.k.a. Fat Jesus - John King, ultra-superstuds Scott Breeden and Troy Shellhamer, and a pair of tough marathoners and "I'm going to beat your ass on every training run" kinda guys - Mike Meyer and Josh Heird.  And, the icing on the cake, our driver was former Hansen-Brooks athlete Ryan Sheehan.  Our driver was arguably the fastest person on the course and he was driving our sorry carcasses around.  It was going to be a good night.

An unusual scenario for us was starting in the second-to-last group (teams are seeded in reverse order beginning early Friday morning with the fastest teams starting late Friday evening).  The only team starting at 7:00 was Primal Sport Mud (our opponents from last year), and we were in the large 5:30 group of twelve or so teams made up of 12-man open, coed, corporate and one other ultra team.  Our goals were pretty simple - don't get caught by the Primal guys and beat every other team on the course.

So we did.  The ultra format obviously left considerably less time for recovery, but I couldn't have imagined how much less.  Pretty much, as soon as you get done, cooled down, get changed, and think about eating something, it was time to go again.  By the time the sun was coming up, it became clear that we were running sub-six minute pace for our average and were potentially going to be catching every single team before we reached Lexington.  For the last leg, the Speedos came out.  Actually, I think King wore his most of the race, but they are a fun way to rally for that last push.  I was dying pretty badly by the end of my last leg - 35.6 is the total distance I would cover - many of my last miles creeping up over 6:30.  Lucky for me, a few of the other guys continued to drop sub-6's.  Ended up being the first team to Lexington, in the overall we wound up 2nd to the Primal Mud 12-man team (but we were glad they didn't catch us), ran 20:29 for 200 miles (6:08 pace).  We won the Ultra division by over three hours and established a new course record for a six-person team.