During our weekly practice, we always have a day of mile repeats. This is when we run a mile at our race pace or a little slower and then do it again four or five times. It is a good workout because the last couple miles are meant to push you to keep the pace all the way to the end. It is a good workout and our guys are definitely benefitting from them. However, that is easy compared to the task we have before us this year - racing at Cedarville three times! It is always a good race when you are at Cedarville as you can see in the picture below from last year. Yes, this race was later in the season but we were at Cedarville and we are going to be there three different times this season. It is a great race for fans to see the runners because there are places we run by two or three times. Coach Wilson has worked us hard already this season in preparation for this race. Our times for the Shawnee State race this year compared to last year are a lot better. Yes, we did well in the race at Shawnee State, but this week there will be 20 teams there and we want to end up better than where we were last year when we were ninth of 20. We plan on keeping our Band of Brothers going throughout the season as well as during the race. I am excited to see how our improvements effect us this Saturday at Cedarville. There will be some big completion at this race, so I hope to see some fans out there cheering us on!

Starting in this blog, I will start giving a shout-out to some of the guys on the team. This week, I want to talk about our captain, Mark Porostosky. He, along with Dustin Wine, have been with the team all four years at MVNU. Mark is a tremendous runner and he proved that last year by making it to NAIA nationals in Wisconsin! We enjoy having Mark on our team because not only is he an excellent runner, he is also one of the biggest encouragers on the team. This past week in practice, we had an easy 10-12 mile run. Mark was going faster because his easy compared to ours is a little faster. He caught up with us and "dared" some of us to run with him. Some of us took the challenge and while we were running with him he said that we looked good and that we will benefit from little things like this. I am thankful that Mark is our captain, but I am more thankful that Mark is a good friend to us. Next week, you will be learning about our other captain, Dustin (Chainsaw) Wine.