A Wet Weekend

We split our team last weekend in an effort to provide our national level athletes with an opportunity to compete against some of the best athletes from around the country at the 100th running of the Drake Relays.  Our younger and emerging athletes stayed closer to home and competed at the Robison Invitational hosted by BYU.  Both meets were met with a wide array of weather conditions.  It was 80+ degrees and breezy at Drake on Friday and then 45 degrees, overcast, and rainy on Saturday.  The meet at BYU was nice on Friday and then the rain and cold set in on Saturday as well.  

I thought our groups handled the conditions well.  One of the things I really enjoy about this team is that I never hear them complain about the conditions.  They understand that they are the same for everyone and that if it were a championship meet they would still be expected to compete at the highest level possible.  So even on days when personal best marks are not likely, they still compete hard and get as much out of the competition as possible.  We call it "hardening the shell".   

We continue our season this weekend by again splitting our team and going to two meets (Arkansas Twilight and Southern Utah Invite).  The Arkansas meet is a great long sprint and middle distance meet.  The SUU meet will hopefully provide some warmer weather and good competition with five schools competing.  We still have a few athletes who need to reach their NCAA regional qualifying marks and hope to get that done this weekend.  

Finally, our only home meet of the season (Utah Twilight) will be held this coming Tuesday (May 5th).  Some of our athletes have named it the Cinco de Mayo Relays.  It serves as a final tune-up meet prior to the conference championships that will start nine days later.  This meet has a history of producing some really good performances and we hope that trend will continue.  We also look forward to it being the final home meet at our old facility as we are scheduled to open our brand new outdoor facility later this fall.   So if your in the area we'd love to have you come out and support our team.  

Happy running, 

Coach Kep