The Woodberry Harrier 2011: Volume 3

On the Power Drive

This is Generations 102.3. Hello everybody! It's Helen Powers on the Power Drive. Here's Aretha Franklin asking for a little respect.  When the horns come in, Coach Hale cranks the volume and Eric starts bobbing his head and lip-syncing as Mini-Van 1 leaps another speed bump. Taking a right out of Woodberry, he asks us where we want to go.  “Left at Rapidan”… “No, right at Rapidan”…“How about the Church run”… “No, let's do go to left at Rapidan.”

Soon we are out on a gravel road, watching the bus fly away in a whoosh of dust. I look around at the ten of us all standing still with Moormont looming in the background.  I begin jogging, and everyone falls in.

This is a challenging year for the team.  We have only ten runners, and a couple are injured at the moment. And I am not even eligible to run in the Prep League or State Championships because I turned nineteen before the August 1 deadline.  My age has been a looming problem ever since I thought about coming to Woodberry in the spring of 2010.  Now here I am in my senior year, my fifth year of cross country and my second year on the Woodberry squad, and I'm unable to compete in either the Prep League or State Meet.  

People ask me why I'm doing it. “Why run all summer if you can’t compete? Why give up so much of your time if you can’t run in the big meets? What’s the point?”  The point?  It’s difficult to explain to a people on the outside, but it's something we WFS runners all understand. We talked about it around the fire that last night at camp. What makes us all come down every day to run repeats to the top of Moormont, to pound out long, dusty miles, to slog through the muddy fields?   We do it because of the bond we share, the devotion to this little team and its traditions and to each other.

The bond began to awaken even before we arrived for camp when Addison and Logan called to make sure we were logging summer miles, letting us know that the team was already working for each other. And the bond become stronger each day after our return---ransacking the Kroger in Lexington, chopping vegetables in the basement kitchen of Accovac, running along the Greenbrier River, testing VO-2 max on the track, racing in the Ragged Mountain Cup, piling into the bus early on Saturday mornings, hearing Lady Gaga’s Poker Face on the way to Crooked Run, Yoga with Joyce, fifty-five degree ice baths with Daphne the rubber duck, pushups and pull-ups in the Barbee—and on and on.  Everything we do together tightens the bond and the bond make the many into one.  

Finishing up at Rapidan, we board the bus again. Sweat pools in the vinyl seats and we turn our tired faces to catch the wind from the open windows. When we stop at a country store and get Gatorade and pork rinds (our post-workout snack of choice) I look around at the team and then out the window to the blue sky as we pull away.  Soon the speakers crackle to life. “Hello everyone, we are wrapping up the Power Drive. I’ve got one last song for ya’ll. Here is Earth, Wind and Fire bringing you back to September.”

                                                                                                               
                                                                                      --Hagood Grantham '12

It's easy to see this bond as merely sentimental, and on one level it surely is.  But it is no soft sentiment.  It has been pounded and stretched and folded and tempered.  It is hard but not brittle.  It is not easy to come by, and neither does it come cheap.   It is costs doubt and frustration and irritation.  It is paid for with swollen tendons and sprained joints and bruised bones.  We didn't much feel it last week when we were running through soggy fields under dark clouds.  We didn't feel it at all on Wednesday when everyone went the wrong way and I got angry at them and they got angry at me—just as it thundered again and drops began falling.   And the boys in the training room waiting on treatment surely didn't feel it.   But that bond was quietly forming in every single these moments.   And it is getting quite strong, as we have seen in both the last two meets.

Last weekend we journeyed up to Mercersburg, PA, where we ran against some really fine talent.  We weren't competitive with the powerful teams like Good Counsel and Gonzaga, but we beat EHS, and the fast runners up front pulled us into some impressive PR's.

Here are the results:

Mercersburg Invitational
Mercersburg, PA
26 September, 2011
Place:  6th out of 10 teams 1-5  spread:  1:19
Runner	Time	Place out of 69 runners
Evans	17:38	19th	a 37-sec. season PR, a 16-sec. lifetime PR
Winston	17:53	22nd	a 28-sec. season PR
Rafield	17:53	23rd	a 45-sec. season PR
Liles	18:45	44th	a 21 sec. season PR
Ways	18:57	46th	a 1:05 season (and lifetime) PR!!!!!
Flory	19:02	47th	A 37-sec season PR
		Place out of 206 runners
Kuhnel	22:18	136th

And after a week of dampness and injury, we hosted Trinity and St. Christopher's here for our Parents' Weekend meet on the lower course where we will run the Prep League Meet this year.  On Wednesday I wondered quite seriously if I'd have to borrow some runners from JV to make a full seven.  We were so depleted and beat up that I think each of us was secretly just hoping we'd be able survive with honor against Trinity (recently billed by the Milestat odds-maker as "a team good enough to beat the best public schools in the state.")  But Friday I was ashamed to have had those thoughts.   We did not just survive.  We ran valiantly.  That may may seem to be an overstatement, but it isn't.  Although Trinity was well ahead of us up front, we had our top 5 in before theirs, and we had PR's across the board.  (It is worth noting, also, that the lower course, which we had to adjust, is significantly longer than it was last year.)

Here are the results:

WFS vs. Trinity and St. Christopher's
Woodberry Lower Course
30 September, 2011
Place:  2nd out of 3 teams 1-5  spread:  37 sec.
Runner	Time	Place out of 26 runners
Winston	17:26	4th	a 27-sec. season PR
Evans	17:33	5th	a 5-sec. lifetime PR
Grantham	17:55	8th	a 2-sec lifetime PR
Rafield	18:02	9th	3 sec. under his 3-mile PR
Liles	18:03	10th	a 42-sec. season PR
Flory	18:40	15th	a 22 sec. season PR
Ways	18:49	16th	an 8-sec. PR
Gimbert	20:03	21st	a 1:19 season PR

The parents are dropping the boys off as I write this.  It's a cold, grey day—more late November than early October---but by Wednesday we are supposed to have the warm autumn sun back, and I hope we will also have our full team back and feeling well.  Next weekend we run in the Albemarle Invitational at Panorama Farms.  If you are in the area, come watch the race.

                                                                              ---BCH