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Lead Stories: Sunday, September 7, 2008

Chris Derrick: An Unusual End
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)

Posted May 29th, 2008 at 12:30 PM by Chris Derrick

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Elite Athlete Blogs, High School, Chris Derrick

Welcome to the official blog of Chris Derrick; the 2007 Gatorade High School Cross Country Runner of the Year and 5k record holder! Make sure to bookmark chrisderrick.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Tuesday for Chris’ latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Stanford!

The last month or so since the Arcadia invite has been for me a really low key time in my racing. I haven’t really had any races to get worked up for or to treat as anything more then glorified workouts. This was supposed to be my downtime to train hard and charge up for my final glorious exit from high school track. My last chance to test my limits, set records, place my mark, etc. But then I got mono and, instead of a fitting climax, I just kind of hit the rising action and petered off somewhere to a denouement.

My symptoms began last Wednesday or Thursday when I began to get abnormally tired and just generally feel like dog doo-doo. I ran the 3200/1600 double at my sectional meet where I had been hoping to run around 8:45 for the 3200. When I nearly fell asleep a little over an hour before my race and doing strides was a serious labor I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t push extremely hard in the race, although I did push, but still it was one of the worst races of my life. Not so much because of pain but frustration at running slower than my 5k pr pace and feeling like I was struggling. I ended up running 8:58 which is actually faster then I had run the year before but was also completely demoralizing. I seriously considered scratching the 1600 but at the time I thought that this was just a passing bug that I would be over by the time state came so I thought I would just gut it out. I ended up feeling much better the second half of the 1600 and actually ran 4:14 (2:11-2:03) to win by 3 seconds. That got me in a better mood (one that was interrupted when Danny Pawola played a practical joke and told me Kevin Havel had just run 8:44/4:14), but I was still ridiculously tired.
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Chris Derrick: Perseverance
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #1)

Posted May 13th, 2008 at 2:22 PM by Chris Derrick

Section: News & Results, Elite Athlete Blogs, High School, Chris Derrick

Welcome to the official blog of Chris Derrick; the 2007 Gatorade High School Cross Country Runner of the Year and 5k record holder! Make sure to bookmark chrisderrick.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Tuesday for Chris’ latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Stanford!

I’d like to begin my blogging experience by sharing one of the most epic runs I’ve ever had, and one that encapsulates my team as well. First a little background. Like most distance runners, we at Neuqua Valley are pretty weird. One of our more minor quirks is our belief in the Interval Gods*. The Interval Gods hate us. They have cursed us and given us crappy weather at all of our meets and interval workouts this track season. What’s more they are trying to kill us: right after we left the NTN meet in Portland there were mudslides and now, just weeks after we left Arcadia, it is threatened by wild fires.

Fortunately we’ve managed to stay (for now) one step ahead of them. We only got a break from the interval Gods wrath at the Aracadia Invite. Arcadia doesn’t really count as we are fairly certain the Interval Gods live there. We tried to appease them by feeding some squirrels in a local park and it was going swimmingly until Danny Pawola offered them extra-sour-rye bread, which they hated. I’ll let that little tidbit set the scene for our tale…
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