"It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys." - Emil Zatopek

This is one of many quotes that Coach Wilson gave the team at the beginning of the season. It played a perfect role this past Saturday at our race at Cedarville. If you talk to a runner about important things to remember while running a race, most of them will say that it is about 90% a mind game and 10% a physical activity. The course at Cedarville is an excellent course, but there are a lot of times where your mind has to be strong. We have been training these last few weeks not only our legs and lungs, but our minds. Coach will give us practices when we need to run 10 miles and in the middle of the run one of the miles is at race pace. I finally realized this is not only building up our endurance for the middle of the race, but it allows us to have a mind that is stronger than a body.

Saturday's race could not have been any better than what it was. The temperature was in the 60's, which is amazing running weather, and our team was starting to get over the injuries that we had in the last race. The thing about Cedarville being a mind game comes into play when the runners hit the straight-aways. I would have to say that 75% of the race is a straight-away. We used this to our advantage on Saturday to improve our times from last week. Individually, each of us improved our times by about a minute. However, the team did not do as well as we wanted from a standings point of view. We ended up getting 10th of 16 teams at the race. Our coach has taught us, though, to keep a positive outlook on everything that happens so that we continue to get better. We are looking forward to this weekend when we head over to Otterbein because this race will be even faster. I am excited about our confidence building because when the end of the season comes we will be the best that we can be and still be happy with whatever result we end with.

As I mentioned last week, I will be talking about a new runner on the team every week. This week, all of the readers have the privilege of learning about Dustin "Chainsaw" Wine (left). He is one of our two captains on the team. Chainsaw has been on the team for all four years since it was re-started. He has an excellent and interesting story of how he became a runner on MVNU's team. To get started, you need to learn about his name, Chainsaw. There was one day when he was young that his father was cutting down a tree in their backyard. The chainsaw that his dad was using was pretty old and rusty, and the tree was the biggest Redwood that he had ever

seen. To make a long story short, the chainsaw ended up breaking while his dad was trying to cut down the tree. Dustin, being a growing boy, was getting hungry because he had been helping his dad. While his dad was in the garage fixing the chainsaw, Dustin thought to himself, "If this tree was cut down, we could eat and be done working for the day!" His hunger got the best of him and he began to chop at the tree until it fell to the ground. Therefore, the name, Chainsaw, became a part of his life and will live on for many years to come!

Now, that story is not true at all, but Chainsaw is an amazing runner and could tell you stories of how his running career has taken him on many roller coaster rides. I am very thankful that he is healthy and still running on the team. He is a great captain and I am going to miss running with him after he graduates. His real story of how he became a runner is actually very simple. He ran track in high school and a week before his freshman year, he was eating lunch with his cousin and their spouse. Coach Wilson happened to be friends with both of them and got to meet Dustin and asked if he wanted to run in college. He obviously said yes and it was a great decision on his part. He is a key part of our team not only with being captain and being one of the faster runners this year, but he is a very funny and trustworthy friend. I hope that you can find out who he is by coming to our races and supporting him and the rest of the team!

Next week we will learn about a very interesting but smart person by the name of Nate Winters. See you all next week!