Welcome to War Eagle Running Camp!

Day 3!

Today campers arrived and watched parts of the movie Spirit of the Marathon.  On a beautiful summer morning, the kids along with their group leaders headed out to Silver Lake and Blackburn Park.  Group 5 stayed on campus today.

I was able to  run with Group 1 and the group had a great run to Silver Lake and back.  Definitely watch out for these kids this fall at races throughout Georgia.  River Holifield, Warner Ray, Ryan Kelly, Carson Waln, Connor Byrne, and Alec Nathan.  Robin Brown also joined Group 1 later in the morning at pacing practice.

Groups came back from their runs and proceeded to do their drills and strides on the soccer field. 

Group competitions today involved a hula hoop.  Look for video later this week to show what it was all about.  Group B aka E-Squared won the contest and gained valuable team points.  E-Squared is winning the competition for the week with Group C in 2nd place.  Group C has no name at the moment!  Hopefully on their rest day they will come up with one

Campers came in and we finished up Spirit of the Marathon and began the movie Running the Sahara.  We then had our first guest speaker of the week, Jared Carson.  Carson is a 2009 graduate of Shorter College where he was a two-time All-American in cross country and track.  Jared started running in 9th grade locally at Campbell High School and steadily progressed from a 22 minute 5k runner to a 31:19 10k runner this past track season.

Jared talked about his career, about the importance of being in a positive environment to reach your goals and also praised the kids for starting their running career early. Jared and his brother Josh will be helping to start training groups in the Smyrna area later this fall.  Look for that!

Campers then ate lunch followed by Coach Jayaraj’s talk on Inspiration.  Jayaraj showed clips from the 2008 Olympic Track Trials, the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo and finally a clip from 2008 Olympian Amy Yoder Begley.  She began her running  at age 10 (1988) and had a initial goal of making the Olympics which she did 20 years later.

Campers are now finishing up another great day in the pool.  Kids in group 1 and 6 are also learning the basics of water running from Coach Heintz.  We hope everyone has a great rest day and hope to see everyone Thursday morning.  Thanks!

-Coach Jayaraj