Jonathan Stanhope Athlete Blog
Check out MaineTrackXC's winter athlete blogger Jonathan Stanhope's first blog. Stanhope is a sophomore distance runner who competes for Bangor High School. Jonathan is one of the top upcoming distance runners in the state, last winter he ran the 9th fastest mile in Class A (4:42.71) & placed 6th in the Class A state meet. Follow Jonathan as he documents his 2011-2012 indoor season.
Hey there guys!
Before I get too far let me introduce myself. I’m a sophomore runner at Bangor High School and I participate in all three seasons. I like to golf and play baseball as well. Yesterday was our second meet of the year, USM Relays. I had never been to this meet before so I was excited. We met at the school at 8 a.m. and loaded the bus. After over a two hour drive, we finally reached our destination of Gorham, Maine. Since my knees were a little sore from being jammed into a bus seat I decided to jog a little bit around the track. We hung around and stretched for a little while and then did our team warm up. Since I wasn’t running the mile for a little while I ate some cheese and peanuts and sat down. When the girls race-walk started though I went outside for a warm up run around campus, it was freezing! When I got back into the nice, warm field-house I checked in for the mile and got ready.
Going into the mile I wanted to get out front and set the pace, but unfortunately I got boxed in and had to move all the way around the outside, wasting my energy that I would soon need. For about a half mile I sat on a South Portland runner ahead of me, and with about three to go Max Payson and Robby Hall moved past me. Soon Payson started to pull away and Hall tried to go with him. Seeing this I knew I had to make a move so I followed behind Hall. We all kicked the last two laps and I finished a disappointing 3rd in 4:42 (the third straight 4:42 mile race I’ve run). Luckily I had some time until my next event, the Sprint Medley.
The Medley was scheduled for 2:50 but since there was 14 heats of it we didn’t run until almost 4:00. This gave me some extra time to stretch and rest my legs. When the race started our team fell behind and were in 5th place when I got the baton. At this point I wasn’t concerned wit our place, I was just concerned about getting the hand off to go smoothly because we had only practiced it a few times. We didn’t mess up though, and off to the races it was. Mike Tudor of Scarborough had a large lead on the field, but everyone else was fair game. I didn’t pass anyone the first three laps of my 800 leg, but on the last lap I kicked by 3 people into third and we got 2nd place to Scarborough. My split was about a 2:08-2:09.
In my final event of the day, the 4x800, I was switched form anchor to opening leg because our original opener had just finished the 4x400 and needed some extra rest. I started out with two runners pacing me for the first lap, and on the second lap I tried to move past them but Wout Moulin of Scarborough decided he would pick up the pace and lead me through laps 2 and 3. On the last lap I moved past him and started to stretch out a little bit of a lead for the hand off exchange. Our second leg held the lead, but Scarborough put Hall as their third leg so they beat us on that one. Our 4th leg put in a good effort but couldn’t catch up and Mike Tudor ran away with his second victory of the day.
Overall I would say this was a very good meet, as it gave us the rare opportunity to run on the USM track before states. This meet was a replacement for us to Black Bear Relays which we usually run, and although I missed being at UMO, this meet was better in the sense that we got to race against the southern Maine teams which we don’t get many chances to see. I wish you all best of luck with your training, I hope you get the chance to read my next entry.
“Life’s battles don't always go to the strongest or fastest man, But sooner or later the man who wins is the fellow who thinks he can.” - Steve Prefontaine
- Jonathan Stanhope
