Week 1: A Starting Point

April 13th. Monday. 5:00 P.M. It's been 8 days since sectionals and I'm still as depressed as when we left the field in defeat against WKU. Just doing some thizzics (that's physics, for those of you who don't know). I get a phone call from Kevin P. :

"Gobies. Regionals. April 2010. I'll see you at the Village at 8:15." And he hangs up.

I know what this means... time to forget about our agonizing defeat against WKU (and #77) and start afresh for next year. What better time to start than 356 days until next sectionals?

We show up to the Village and start off with a nice little 2-mile warmup job at an easygoing 5 minute mile pace. We're hardly winded at this point. Now we start the real workout. We make our way over to the other side of the track and look ominously at the behemoth that is the Village stairs. We decide to run 3 sets with sprints in between; a daunting task indeed.

About halfway through the last set I start feeling fatigued. But as I look up in distress and see Kevin's thundering calves in front of me bounding effortlessly up the stairs like a deer prancing in the forest, I realize, did I expect the road to Regionals to be easy? We finish the stairs and sprints, and add a few more sprints on the track afterwards for good measure. Day 1 complete.

Day 2. Thursday April 16th. Kevin and I are joined by more teammates, Andy "big calves" Coleman, Ed "reppin the hat" Yanosik, John "I got flow" Carey, and Owen "big chill" Mayer. John and Owen are still only freshmen, and already they have the vision and dedication that we all need to take the next step to regionals. Gotta love it. We start off with the normal 2 mile warmup jog. After the first mile, Owen decides to push us all by picking up the pace considerably for the second mile. Once again, gotta love the spirit of these young ones. After this difficult warmup, instead of chilling out and taking it easy, we up the ante and undertake 4 sets of stairs with sprints in between. We only made it through 3 before collapsing from exhaustion. Nah, just kidding. What do you think we are, chumps? We finish the stairs (all 4 sets) and the sprints, and end the night by playing with the women (who are going to regionals, we'll see you ladies there next year, I guarantee it).

Week 1 complete. Some calves were throbbing, some tears were shed, but it was all worth it on the road to regionals. Hope to see more of you chumps on the field on Monday 8:30.

The Fighting Gobies: Where amazing happens.

- Delonte aka "pretty eyes" aka mark