Welcome to War Eagle Running Camp!

Friday at WERC Part 1

Friday was a very busy day at camp.  Highlights included All-State runners Megan Mavity (The Marist School) and Sydney Marshall (Chattahoochee HS) as guest speakers.  Coach Heintz also gave a great break-out session emphasizing off-season training for middle schoolers.

The day started off with a short 30-35 minute run (day before a race or time trial is typically shorter).  I ran with Group 2 today which had a very strong run led by Alexandra Horst (counselor from The Lovett School).  Nick Andrist,  Jocelyn Brown, Erin Connolly, Mary-Mac Hailey, Alex Smith, Daniel Navarro, and Seas Patton-Miller formed a beautiful pack and had a great recovery run thru Blackburn Park and back.

With possible thunderstorms being forecasted, our 2nd annual pacing contest took place right after coming back from the run.  Group 4 which consists of Rachel Callahan, Mary Grace Heller, Jensen Caster, Morgan Ilse, Taylor Lamb, Sarah Jane Miles, Tessa Schwarze, and Rachel Ward won the contest.  They were only 11.1 seconds off their predicted times.

With no pacing practice (due to thunderstorms) and a muddy course, the performance of Group 4 was outstanding. Each group paced a mile and 400 on the Marist cross country course.  All groups were finishing at the run started coming down hard.

Everyone came inside and dried off as played part of the documentary Fire on the Track.  The movie is the story of Steve Prefontaine- one of Ameica’s greatest distance runners ever.

Coach Heintz then gave an insightful breakout on high school running in GA.  Highlights included how to qualify individually and as a team for the state cross country meet and how middle school cross country running in GA has really taken off as well.  The future is definitely bright for our sport!

More to come later today!

-Coach Jayaraj