Thanksgiving in Abilene

This Thanksgiving Mary and I went to her parents house in Abilene. We were surprised to have a white Thanksgiving with over four inches of snow. Here's me with the snowman I made. This is the first snowman I have EVER made! Yes, it hasn't snowed in San Antonio since 1984 and I did make a snowman that year, but had help and I don't remember it much. I went to school in Abilene and every time it snowed my friends and I spent our time sliding down the hills around school. It never dawned on us to build a snowman! So, here it is...

A Poet Among Us...

I want to share this with people who read the blog. This poem was written by Yvonne Rodriguez. I had no idea that she wrote poems...pretty good from my perspective!

A SEASON TO BE THANKFUL

We share our laughs, we share our smiles.
We gather our thoughts, when we run those long miles.
We are all runners, and different in each and every way.
So hear my words and thoughts, for why I now pray.
This season is now over, the one and only that I will never forget.
At least now I can leave and not have any regrets.
I’m so thankful to have met each and every one of you.
Why this season turned out this way, no one knew.
Even though we tried to do the damn thing.
I hope you all know that I will always carry you all, under my wings.
We pushed each other and cheered others on.
It’s sad to say that it’s all gone.
I now pray to hold the good memories, and pray we will still be strong.
But wait I have one more thing to add, this won’t be long.
You all don’t know how thankful I am to be here.
Just thinking about it brings a teer.
There are so many things to say.
But maybe this could wait another day.
Please remember that everything happens for a reason.
And I hope to be seeing you all next season.
So share your thoughts to family and friends, and always remember to thank the Lord.
After all, this is the season to be thankful, so Happy Thanksgiving Incarnate Word.

-Yvonne

UIW is closed this week from Wednesday-Friday for Thanksgiving holiday. The distance runners are off this week as we transition to the track base building phase. We just finished two weeks of good base building as an active recovery transition from the cross country season.

Track practice is going well. We only have one day of practice this week - today as we give everyong time to travel home and spend time with family.

Here is our preliminary 2008 track schedule:

Date Meet Location

February
1, 2 Houston Indoor Invite Houston

16 UH All-Comers Meet Houston

23 Trinity Invitational San Antonio


March
1 Border Olympics Laredo

7 Texas State Invitational San Marcos

14, 15 Indoor Nationals Mankato, MN

22 UT Invitational Austin

28, 29 Victor Lopez – Rice Univ. Houston


April
3, 4, 5 Texas Relays Austin

19 UT Twilight Austin

25 Rice Twilight Houston


May
9 ACU Last Chance Meet Abilene

22, 23, 24 Outdoor Nationals California

Some things might change in the next few weeks as I wait approval from certain meets. This should be the schedule for the spring.

Until next time...

Shayn Weidner Blog on Track Shark

For those of you that may be interested, Shayn now has a blog entry on Track Shark.com. Go to www.trackshark.com and then blogs in the upper links. Once in the blogs scroll down until you see Shayn's picture (beard with a red jacket).

Track Shark Blog link: http://www.trackshark.com/blogs/home.php

He talks about his training, his thoughts on running, and life as a college distance runner.

In one of his latest entries, read his mathematical equation for converting cross training to running mileage to make sure you keep your mileage effort up while cross training.

I plan to publish the men's and women's track schedules by December 3 along with Spring track rosters for both squads. We will give the indoor thing a shot on an interim basis with the women's team as we work to see if it is feasible for our program. Most of the athletes don't ask about indoors and prefer to concentrate on the outdoor season. Most of the women will travel to the minimum required meets as will a few select men as we see if we can qualify anyone for the national championships in Minnesota.

In track, we are concentrating on strength and endurance right now with the sprinters and jumpers. They are working hard and struggling through some difficult workouts while we expand the aerobic base for the sprinters - something many of them have not done before. The extensive weight program and running seem to be paying off as they continue to get into shape for the spring season.

Correction

The two men transfers would give us 12 under 50 seconds in the open 400m:
George Alicea
Christian Alicea
Taylor Echevarria
Marcus Edwards
Chacho Madera
Lalo Flores
David Martinez
Everrett Rusher
John Zavala
Michael Moszee and
2 Spring transfers

2007 Season in the books

The UIW XC team finished the 2007 season last weekend at the Regional championships in Joplin, MO. The weather was very nice and the course was well put together. After running there we might consider going back there for the 2008 Missouri Southern Stampeed in mid-September. The only conflict is that it is the same weekend as the National Catholic Championships at Notre Dame, which was a fun trip for us last year.

The regional meet proved to be a tough lesson for many of our athletes. I will recap some of the performances:

Sophomore Shayn Weidner experienced a significant improvement on last year's regional finish with a 40th overall finish. His 33:06 time was also a PR for him (33:15 in his only track 10K last season). The course was difficult for Shayn as he is what I like to call a rhythm runner - someone who excels on the track and on flat cross country courses - courses that don't have too many rolling hills and/or turns and cut backs. Shayn relies on his strength to beat people and wear them down. That is why he was the best runner in the conference last year during the track season. He strives on being a human metronome, capable of setting a pace and holding it for laps at a time. I expect his XC improvement to bode well in track as we work to hit his goals of 15:10 (5K), 4:04 (1500), 8:40 (3K) and 32:15 (10K). If his freshman track season is any indication, these times are well within reach.

Freshman Adrian Carrillo continued his consistent freshman campaign. I was pleased with his season given the fact that I thought I was going to have to redshirt him this season. Adrian came into pre-season camp not able to run (or complete a short 30 minute run) because of a nagging IT band injury. The injury robbed him of 75% of his summer training and possibly a chance to run with Shayn during this XC season. A strong XMAS break will help Adrian be a consistant sub-16 5K runner on the track. Adrian has made it his goal to be Shayn's shadow from now until the track season so that he can fully complete his transition from HS runner to college athlete.

Roman Jacobo finally came back to us. After debuting with a sub-28 minute 5 miler Roman struggled to maintain consistency throughout the remainder of the season. Thus I advised Roman to run the 10K regional race as though it were an 8K. This strategy seemed to work as Roman was only 8 seconds off his 8K PR through the 8K Saturday. This helped him finish in 34:45.

Now, the recruiting begins to finish out the men's team. Jay Wilson (3rd in the State 5A 1600m in 2006) will join us in the spring. Jeremy Juarez (3rd in the State 3A 800 and 5th in the 3A XC in 2006 and 2007) will join us next fall after redshirting his freshman year to build an aerobic base. Plans are also in the works to add a sub-15 5K horse in time for the spring track season.

The women went into the regional meet after falling just short of a conference championship bid. Yvonne Rodriguez ran away with the conference championship in convincing fashion only to suffer from her poorest race of the season. Her 17th place finish signifies the highest-ever finish for a Lady Cardinal at the regional championships. However, based on another runner from the conference finishing 13th overall in the region, it is safe to say that a good day should have Yvonne finishing in the top 3 finish. It just wasn't meant to be. Nonetheless, Yvonne has to be proud of how well her senior season went. She looks forward to a strong track season. Her previous PRs in the 800, 1500, 3000, and 5000 are all provisional NCAA championship qualifying marks. We will figure out what races we are going to focus on during the XMAS break. The preliminary report seems to say that she will focus on the 3000 during indoor and the 1500 and 3000 during outdoor. There is a possibility that she may be able to pop off a sub 2:12 800 to sneak into the outdoor championships.

Rose Caldwell broke the sub 23 barrier (6K) to set a PR once again - basically 19 flat for the 5K. Her continued improvement is encouraging for track, where she will be able to concentrate on a race more suitable to her abilities - the 3000m. I look for her to break the 10:45 barrier this season.

Finally, Melissa Martinez proved that she will do anything for her teammates. We discovered Thursday morning that she may be suffering from a stress reaction in her lower leg. While she has been running through some shin pain for 3 weeks we didn't think it had gotten that bad. After her Thursday morning easy run the pain became too much to bare and we feared the worst after talking with the head athletic trainer. He assured us that she would not do any further damage to the leg by running the race. Needless to say, she was in pretty good pain throughout the race (especially on the down hills) and her time showed it. However, her 23:30 6K was not all that bad considering the circumstances. We hope to get this problem taken care of as this was the second occurance since mid-summer.

On another note, we officially received the nomination to host the 2008 South Central Regional meet here in San Antonio. The race will be held at the Live Oak City Park. This is exciting news for the young program and great news for the city of San Antonio running community. We hope to be more competitive in 2008 so that we can show our home crowd that we belong with the best in the region.

The track team is doing well - working hard and getting better by the day. Our men's sprint depth is impressive as we are about to add two more sub 48.5 400m runners. That will give us 10 men that have run sub-50 in the last 6 months. Our women sprinters/jumpers are also working hard. Morgan Moszee is far ahead of last year's conditioning (when she finished 7th in the nation in the long jump). Our new jumps coach, Rosemary Dupree, is sure to get Morgan where she needs to be in time for the indoor championships in Minnesota in March. Unfortunately, Morgan does not have any outdoor eligibility left after losing a season while at UTSA due to a hamstring injury. We continue to work hard toward our goal of sending a men's 4x400 relay and 4 x 100 relay to California for the outdoor national championships in May, 2008. Keep on the lookout for our results in the spring as we work to make the UIW community proud.

Until next time...