It is now the part of the season that all of us have been preparing for. The AMC conference race is tomorrow and I have never been more excited. The race this year is going to be tougher than any other year because of the amount of talent that is in our conference.

Let's recap...We started the season out with a second-place finish at Shawnee State. I would like to say that this is the best that we have done at this race since we started the team. It was a beautiful day to run and we had all our adrenaline running because of it being the first race of the season. Then, there was Cedarville. We love Cedarville! I say this because tomorrow is our second time going there and then next weekend is back at Cedarville for NCCAA Nationals. Anyway, we continued to improve our times at that race as well as at Otterbein, All-Ohio and Wilmington. See, the thing about Wilmington is that it is the fastest race of the season. I only say that because when we go to that state up north it happens to have bad weather. This brings me to our last race in that dreadful state of Michigan.

I would consider the Aquinas race an experience race for our team. This is because out of the 21 teams that were there, six or seven of them are in the top 25 teams in the nation! This is a great race to run because we get to see great competition as well as a fast course. The last two years, however, have been rainy. This slowed down the course by about 30 seconds. I mentioned to Coach that if this course ever dried up, it would be the fastest course we run. Mark Porostosky ran a 26:01 last year at this race, which is 1 second from his PR. If the rain wasn't there...well, we will never know. Coach did plan this race at a perfect time, though. He knew that it was coming down to the end of the season and we were starting to focus on pushing through to the end no matter what obstacles were in our way.

This brings me to tomorrow - the most important part of our season - the conference race. We have been working for this race and this race only all season. We are ready to get out there and show everyone else who MVNU is as a cross country team. This past week, Coach Wilson has been really putting the focus of the race into our heads. In fact, we have been running the race in our heads for the last three days. I know it sounds different, but when I sit there thinking about how the race is going to go with all the turns and straight-aways, I can actually feel my body in the race and my heart begins to pump faster as if I was in the race at that very moment. I can say this for the rest of the team as well that just picturing the race in our heads with our mile split times and the people that will be around us is going to make tomorrow's race that much easier.

I hope that we have a good turnout tomorrow of fans from here at MVNU. I know that many of you will be praying and supporting us no matter where you are, and we thank you as a team for all of the support that you have given us this season (and the tolerance of our short shorts in the cafeteria!) I cannot wait to update everyone on how our race goes. Remember to keep us in your prayers!

Today's blog is also featuring our last senior on the team, Kenny Alexander (left). This is his first year running with us, and we are extremely glad that he chose to. He is our third-fastest runner and is a very important encourager for our team. Kenny's history of running is quite interesting as was the other runners I have talked about. If you were at the Tailgate Party at the beginning of the season, I introduced the team with all of their nicknames. If you recall, Kenny's nickname was milk chocolate. Here is the reason for this name. When Kenny was a child, he loved to eat chocolate all the time (he still loves eating it today). His parents would always get upset at him for eating so much chocolate because it always spoiled his meals and they knew that it would affect his health one day.

Well, his health was infected on day when Kenny was in middle school. He was sitting in class getting ready to take a bite of his chocolate when he saw a dark spot on his arm. He went to the nurse to have it checked out, and she ended up finding more dark spots all over his body. His parents took him to a specialist doctor to get this rare condition checked out. After many tests, Kenny was diagnosed with milktascious chocolitis, which is a skin disease in which the skin turns to the color of the chocolate he was eating. He kind of liked that idea because he was very pale and always burned instead of tanning. For his treatment, he had to run as fast as he could when he saw chocolate. This helped with his physical health as well as his addiction. One day, he was running so fast at his rehab that he ran out of some of his chocolate-covered skin. Don't ask me how it is possible, but it must be more rare than his disease. Anyway, this explains the skin tone he has today. It isn't dark like a chocolate bar, but he isn't pale white any more either.

If someone wants to bring chocolate to the race tomorrow, I am sure that Kenny would run much faster than at any other race! I am glad that Kenny joined the team this year, and he will be missed by Coach and the rest of the team. All of the seniors are extremely great people and happen to enjoy running. I am so glad I got to experience a team such as the one we had this year. I hope that all of the readers will get to see our team and how we have come together to show everyone the talent that God has given us! Next week, I will let you know how our race went as well as introduce you to the rest of the team that will be back next year. See you then!