Lisa left her car at the Route 128 Amtrak station in Westwood before travelling to NYC on Friday. Rather than tie up two people for 2 hours retrieving it along with another hour to drop me off in Hopkinton for a long run on course, I instead ran to Westwood to get it.
It was 14.5 miles to Westwood and then I added an extra 3.5mi back and forth on access road near train station to get to 18 miles in under 3 hours. My GPS watch has a nice feature I hadn’t tried previously where a planned route can be downloaded into it. It shows simple course line on one of its screens and buzzes if you go off course (handy a couple of times). I ran this 14 minutes faster than my first slushy 18 miler on Comm Ave hills a month ago.
Last two miles hurt a lot…slowed down by 1min/mile at constant heart rate…and still have 8.2mi more to go after that…
My training history from September til now and plan til 4/15:
Jared combined with Ryan Lucken, Ben Porter, and Dan Swain to run a season’s best 1:32.46 in the 4x200m relay, the 5th fastest time in Massachusetts and 11th in New England this year and a milesplit elite-level performance (results). The team placed 10th in the emerging elite division and ranks 104th (out of 10,000 teams) in the US.
Team splits: Ryan 22.66, Ben 23.07, Jared 23.37, Dan 23.29
Ryan’s lead off leg was impressive with the flat start. The equivalent of roughly 22.0 for a running start leg.
Here is the professional New Balance / Armory video of the race:
Here is mom’s version:
In the Freshman 60m dash, Jared improved on his 32nd seed to place 22nd (7.65, 7.099 55m split), but with over 3 weeks since his last 55m race, didn’t get the start he was looking for. The starter was a bit erratic (as commentators mention), but that’s something to adapt to when racing outside of Reggie. Results
Mom’s version:
Jared also served as alternate for the Newton North Sprint Medley. He ran on the MA #1 team that qualified the North to compete in the national meet. The team raced to an All-American 6th place.
Kayla came into the final meet of her indoor season — Saturday’s Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Division III Championships — seeded a distant 18th in the long jump.
The ECAC Division III consists of 186 member schools, so that’s a pretty good accomplishment in itself. But then as Kayla’s coach said to us yesterday, there is a reason why they actually run track meets rather than just hand out medals based on the seed performances.
Kayla opened her long jump competition with a indoor PR-matching 17’5.25″ jump and then followed it with a strong 17’4.25″ jump that would prove important. She finished 2nd in the 1st flight of 11 jumpers, but with 13 better jumpers remaining to jump in the 2nd flight to fill out the 9-woman final, she figured her day was likely over and headed to the stands to visit with the family.
The 2nd flight under-performed vs. their PRs, and after they were finished jumping, Kayla had made the finals (3 more jumps) and stood in a 3-way tie for 4th place, with her strong 2nd jump giving her the lead among them on the tie-breaker.
I have never seen such a tight field. Look at the performances of the top 9 jumpers going into the final 3 jumps:
5.46 5.39 5.32 5.31 5.31 5.31 5.30 5.30 5.30
Only 3/4″ separated places 3-9, and ALL the jumpers in the final had a better personal best than Kayla, so she could easily fall back out of the points to 9th if others improved and she didn’t.
In 4th round one of the three 5.30 jumpers popped off a 5.51 for the lead, and pushed Kayla back to 5th. Kayla responded on her 5th jump with an indoor/outdoor PR 5.39m (17′ 8.25″) that moved her up past the 4th place 5.32 to 3rd place tie, with her 2nd jump again winning the tie breaker. That jump is over a foot better than her 16’8″ high school indoor PR.
Kayla’s 6 points made her Ithaca’s 4th highest point contributor toward the team title, only exceeded by NCAA-championship-bound seniors Jenn Randall, Amanda Rissmeyer, and Emilia Scheemaker. Kayla’s performance ranks her 43rd in the NCAA division III qualifying list, with the top 16 (18’1.75″) qualifying.
Kayla also competed in the triple jump on Friday, delivering her 2nd best career performance with a 35′ jump for 14th place.
Jared was one of the few (I counted 3) freshman boys competing in the State Open meet on Saturday at the Reggie Lewis Center (results and Milesplit coverage). Â His 4x200m relay team improved on their 13th place seed with an 11th place 1:33.87. Â Here is a video of the race. Â I had trouble getting into position and focusing initially, but got it sorted out for his 2nd leg. They were seeded in a slower heat than last week so had to push themselves.
Here is a video from a different photographer — Jared’s race starts at 4:00. Chick here to jump ahead.
Here is my video.
Newton North Splits
Porter 23.57
Prior 23.47
Swain 23.40
King 23.43
Preparing for Boston with the Running for Rare Diseases marathon team, Dad ran the Hyannis Half Marathon on Sunday  in 40F rain in 1:54:04 (8:43/mile), placing 20th in the Master’s 190-210lb Clydesdale division (results).  The GPS had the distance at 13.25 miles, with the extra 260 yards likely due the need to dodge deep cold puddles along the route.  Garmin pace was 8:43 and 1:52:54 at 13.1mi.
Kayla jumped to a 4th place in the long jump on Day 1 of the 2013 New York State Track Conference Championships Friday night in Ithaca (press release, results, meet program, meet website). Kayla jumped 5.25m (17′ 2.75″), her 2nd best indoor performance, improving on her 5th place seed to add 5 points to Ithaca’s 74 point 1st day total. Ithaca led the 12 school meet followed by St. Lawrence (57 points) and Rochester (28 points) going into Day 2. Kayla placed 12th in the triple jump with a jump of 10.25m (33’7.5″), well off her 36′ PR, but still her 3rd best career performance. Ithaca won the meet by 52 points (2nd day press release).
Jared split a personal best 23.12 on the 2nd leg in Newton North’s 4x200m relay in the MIAA Division 1 State Championships on Saturday (race video, photo galleries, results, coverage). Newton ended up 2nd in the team competition with 48 points behind Lowell’s 50.
The relay qualified to advance to next week’s State Open competition as 13th seed in the field of 24 teams. Jared is the only freshman running in the top 13 relays (I didn’t check the rest) and no freshman qualified in individual events, so he is one of the few if not only freshman boys in the meet. The relay’s splits were 23.78 lead off, 23.12 Jared, 23.10, and 24.25 for a time of 1:34.25. Had North loaded their top sprinter into this relay they likely would have placed 2nd.
RACE VIDEO (Jared 2nd Leg). The Chelmsford senior who Jared holds off was a member of the meet record team and New England Champion relay last year (5th at Nationals), so no slouch. He is #11 returning 200m runner in the state with a 22.67 PR. Thanks to good handoffs, North comes into Jared’s leg a yard ahead of them and comes off the 2nd hand-off with a yard lead.
Jared set personal bests in the 55m dash (6.99, 6th), long jump (19’5.5″, 5th) and 4x200m (23.68, 4th) at the Bay State Conference Championships (results, photo gallery, Newton Tab article). Team scores were not kept as the focus is on individual championships, but if the meet were scored, it would have been North winning with 125 points with 2nd place Needham back at 57.75pts. Jared contributed 12 of North’s 125 points. He was one of only 5 athletes in the league to place in 2 individual events. Only 4 seniors beat him in the long jump. He missed qualifying for the state championships in the long jump by 0.5″.
Kayla returned to hurdling with a 9.97 60m hurdles PR at the Ithaca Invitational for 11th (results, 200m video). By standardized conversions, that works out to a 9.27 55m hurdles, which improves on her 9.32 high school PR. She also ran a personal best 27.5 split on a 4x200m relay.
Her photo (below) was featured on the full back page of The Ithacan college newspaper. Her coach set copies of the paper to us and her high school coach. Click on image for larger view.
Photo from Ithacan (found on flicker)
Mom flew up to attend and took a video of the 4x200m. Kayla is the 2nd leg:
Kayla had foul trouble in long jump, but her last jump (shown below) was measured at a monster 5.75m (18′ 10.25″):
