Matt McClintock Fall Athlete Blog
Read Past Blogs: Blog #1
Hello again everyone,
It’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last entry. For starters there was last minute preparation for the Beach 2 Beacon (I hope a lot of you guys got out to run that, what a fun race), then I went on a 5 day college trip with my family that took us all the way down to Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
But let me start with the Beach 2 Beacon. It was such a nice day for a race. We got down there around 7:00 AM (had to leave my house at 3:30 AM). Got down to the start line and began warming up with Andy Reifman-Packett (ARP). Shortly after that we rushed into line for the start of the Wheelchair Division, exactly seventeen minutes later we were off. I decided early to shoot to the front of the pack and use some other people to pull my time down (sub 33 goal time). However, I didn’t realize quite house fast the pack I was with was going. I glance up as we approach the first mile clock and I see a big old 4:53 staring me in the face. At that point there’s nothing much to do but go with it. We came through mile two in 10:03 (a little bit more civilized pace). The three mile came and went at around 15:01 and the 5k mark we hit in 15:42. It bares noting that I was now WAY behind the pack I had started with. The next half of the race I ran with the simple goal of just holding on. As we came up over the hill I was in a race with one of the guys that was in the pack with me at the beginning. He passes me followed quickly by Matt Rand. As I hit the grass I new I could be happy with my time and I sort of just fell over the finish line.
A lot of my friends had very solid performances on the day and should be super proud. Fellow Class C star Chase Brown crossed the time line in 34:04 and 65th overall. Class B State Champ Silas Eastman had a great first run clocking 34:49 good for 79th. Class A Runner Up Andy Reifman-Packett ran 35:09.8 to just edge out Class A State Champ Nick Morris who clocked 35:09.9 (Can‘t wait to see Andy, Nick, and Harlow mix it up at the Class A meet this year). Inside my running club Elliot Gore clocked 48:53 very solid for his first ever 10k and my sister Allie ran 49:15.
Directly following the race my mom, dad, and I hopped in the car and traveled down near Hartford, Connecticut to spend the night. The next morning we traveled approximately five and half hours down to Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to visit Lock Haven University. I toured the campus with a couple guys on the cross country
team and went running with a recently graduated 4x DII All-American. From there we had a meeting with the coach who reminded me a lot of my high school coach. Spoiler alert, this is where I’m most likely going to run for college, if I get accepted of course.
So overall we’ve all had a busy last couple of weeks leading up till cross. Hope you all get your last minute miles in, but don’t hurt yourselves. Let’s show the country that Maine distance runners are the toughest and hardest working of anyone in the country.
In the spirit of the Beach 2 Beacon today’s quote comes from the races founder.
“As everyone knows running is about more that just putting one foot in front of the other; it is about our lifestyle and who we are.” - Joan Benoit Samuelson (Gold medalist in the first women’s Olympic Marathon and Maine native).
