December 1, 2003
The task of writing an entry to sum up my last cross country season at Emory is something I have not looked forward to. To be honest, the terminus of my last season has yet to entirely sink in.
As an English major, I could write pages upon pages about the feelings I experienced before during and after the national meet. However, the majority of the weekend can be summed up quite easily: We did it.
After four years of struggling to justify our presence at the national meet and insisting that we were better than just a top-25 team in the nation, we finally asserted our presence. Not only did we meet our goals as a team, but I achieved my own personal goal of becoming a cross country All-American.
Needless to say, I'm still stoked about what we achieved last weekend and I think the memories from this last national meet will linger in my memory for the rest of my life.
Phil Hagedorn is a senior from Atlanta.
November 17, 2003
It is always easy to write about the great days. Last Saturday was the best display ever put on by an Emory squad at an NCAA regional meet.
It was a fantastic testament to the team's resilience after the disappointment of UAAs.Unfortunately, five straight region titles, five all-region plaques and 69 cents will get us nothing more than a nice warm cup of coffee in Hanover this weekend.
I will now fill the rest of my diary space with fuzzy, feel-good dribble.
To my senior colleagues: Saturday will be great. The brief moment will be a distillation of years of work, challenges and achievement. We will never have it back; that is all the motivation we need.
But Saturday is not the end. We will run again. No banners, no crowds, just us having fun. And guess what guys; it will be the same.
Jake Marren is a senior from Jacksonville, Fla.
October 27, 2003
The coming weeks comprise the heart of our season. The races we run these next four weeks are the reason we ran during the summer, the reason we've trained since the beginning of classes and the reason we've busted our butts every Saturday morning.
I always look forward to the postseason with tense anticipation. Will the team prove itself in the races that count or merely fade into the obscurity as in seasons past?"
The exciting part of all this is that I feel fully justified in saying that this year's team has the potential to prove the naysayers wrong, to render their pessimism null and void. Should each member of this team step to the starting line with his duty in mind and, during the course of our conference championship, our regional championship and finally our national championship, perform his duty this team has the potential to go far.
However, it must be a concerted effort. The beauty and the agony of cross country lies in a dependence upon your teammates in addition to yourself. In one sense, it is agonizing to depend upon another's performance.
Yet it is an incredible feeling to seize victory as a team. This two-faced nature of cross country rears its head in the postseason when every race and every second and every place make a difference and determine the success or failure of a team. I for one am truly excited to have the opportunity to test my mettle alongside my teammates.
Phil Hagedorn is a senior from Atlanta.
October 20, 2003
In the absence of any meet-related material for this column, I thought I should use the time to make a shameless pitch to prospective Emory athletes.
Choosing to be an NCAA Division III athlete is a fantastic decision that can allow you to grow as both a competitor and student. I won't regurgitate the wealth of accolades that Emory athletics has garnered on and off the field. Instead I will talk about how running at Emory will enrich your college experience.
First, you will become a better athlete. Our coaching staff is second to none and the facilities are world class.
Second, you will be socially connected to people who share common interests. The cross country team travels to North Carolina for one week before orientation to train in the mountains and to get acquainted.
This has tremendous benefits for the freshmen. While ordinary freshmen are getting lost on campus, cross country runners already have formed a core group of friends to help them through the sometimes overwhelming first weeks of school.
Finally let's not forget the academic component of the equation. Competing on a varsity team, while time consuming, is always a positive influence on academics. Being on a regular schedule is crucial for effectively managing assignments and keeping you focused on the tasks at hand.
Interested? Wondering if Emory cross country is right for you? Please don't hesitate to email me (see link below). This tasteless plug only skims the things that make running in college great. So take a closer look at Emory!
Jake Marren is a senior from Jacksonville, Fla.
October 6, 2003
A favorite topic of discussion for cross country athletes is PRs or personal records. Personal records are a tricky subject; it is impossible to compare two races on different courses but when the topic arrives, it seems all runners become experts in forming regressions to calculate the effect of perceived wind hinderance on performance. Oh yeah, and remember that the course was 27 meters long, so that counts for like, two seconds.
At least for this week, such inane babble will be based on the somewhat equalizing fact that we raced on the same course as two weeks earlier. As a team, we are improving tremendously and this is to be expected this early in the season.
For the freshmen and rookies who are adjusting to the collegiate five-mile race, times are dropping precipitously. Meanwhile the veterans are quickly approaching and, in some cases, already surpassing marks they set in previous years.
We will race again at Panthersville for our region championship. For the seniors it will be a great chance to see how much we have progressed over four years and the dozen races we have run on that particular course.
Another positive aspect of last Saturday, beyond improving times, was the presence of so many parents at the race. The large crowd of support lining the course made an appreciable difference through the race.
The team thanks all the parents who came from near and far to cheer for it. Wish us luck this Friday when we compete in the NCAA pre national meet at Hanover College, Indiana.
Jake Marren is a senior from Jacksonville, Fla.
September 29, 2003
It seems that I've been blessed, at least thus far, as the guy who gets to write his diary whenever the team has an off weekend. Normally this would automatically find me talking about how we were able to work out harder because we didn't have a meet to worry about or how nice it is to have the weekend off.
Instead, I'm going to talk about something different we did last Sunday. The Atlanta Track Club is a fairly large organization as far as running clubs go and is fairly active in the metro Atlanta area.
Last Sunday the club held a race known as an Ekiden. Imported from Japan the concept behind the Ekiden is as follows: each member of a team, made up of six runners, must run the equivalent of a sixth of a marathon (26.2 miles). This comes out to around 4.3 miles per runner.
Coach Graham split the team into three groups and Sunday morning we all woke up at the crack of dawn, ran down to Piedmont Park in the middle of Atlanta and took our turns running our respective legs of the Ekiden. While this doesn't sound too particularly exciting I assure you: it was.
It's been a while since I've participated in a race where the atmosphere was anything but competitive. Instructed by Coach Graham to tempo our 4.3 miles, we knew that there was no reason to get worked up.
With hundreds of people milling around, warming up and getting ready for the race, we were able to joke around with each other and other runners, which simply would have been impossible on a regular race morning. As Paul Tufaro, Andrew Podgurski, and I circled the course together (we were each placed on separate teams) we laughed, talked and befriended the policemen guiding the runners through the course.
While it certainly seems a cliche given the context of our off week, I can honestly say that Sunday morning was a welcome respite from the tense, competitive race atmosphere we encounter on normal weekends. I can only hope that the team continues to participate in similar events as the years pass.
Phil Hagedorn is a senior from Atlanta.
September 22, 2003
In honor of the recently deceased Johnny Cash, the last few weeks of the season should be called "I Walk the Line." The analogy applies in a few ways; our philosophy on training and how we conduct ourselves as NCAA Division III athletes.
The trick to building a successful training program lies in the difficult task of stressing the athlete without breaking him down. Our week began with a challenging hill climb and tempo run at Kennesaw Mountain (see Phil's last diary entry for an eloquent description of the event).
Tuesday brought a challenging interval workout, multiple repeats of thousand and two-thousand meter efforts simulated our perceived race pace. Thursday's workout, while strenuous, provided mental relief as we reenacted the epic battle of Helmsdeep by charging up a steep hill under a hail of dodge balls. The lesson: keep your head up on the hills. By the time Saturday rolled around, everyone was feeling fatigued but no one complained and despite some slow times, the meet was a general success.
Training hard is only half the equation, the other half is properly taking care of ourselves. As serious athletes we cannot live the typical college student life of parties and drinking every night. We "walk the line" to keep ourselves healthy and injury-free.
The last few weeks were hard but they will pay big dividends later in the season. Saturday night everyone on the team cut loose for a few hours and enjoyed some of the fun they denied themselves all week; parties are more fun when you know you have earned them.
Jake Marren is a senior from Jacksonville, Fla.
September 15, 2003
One always tries to tiptoe the line between racing too often, which inevitably results in burnout, and racing too little, which lends itself to an acute lack of experience when the important meets roll around in November.
Following what amounted to a training run at Sewanee on opening weekend, we were given an opportunity to regroup and prepare ourselves for the long season to come. Instead, we found ourselves early Sunday morning at the base of Kennesaw Mountain. Once a Civil War battlefield, the park serves modern-day weekend warriors with miles of beautiful trails which offer a forested respite from the sidewalks of Atlanta.
We drive out to Kennesaw every Sunday morning but rarely do we tackle Kennesaw Mountain. The run boils down to around 20 minutes of sustained running up a 45-degree slope. The burning in the lungs starts around minute two and refuses to subside until we reach the summit--clearly marked by an antique cannon overlooking the view of Atlanta.
Because it hurts while going up, I'm always reminded why my heart rate increases upon hearing coach say "We're going up the mountain!" As I turned around last Sunday to cheer my teammates up the last 100 yards, I watched my companions do the same and I remembered why I love cross country; very little in this world rivals the level of camaraderie which I have experienced on the team here at Emory.
Phil Hagedorn is a senior from Atlanta.