A famous Yogi Berra adage makes reference to athletics being 90 percent mental and the other 50% is physical. Such philosophy applies to distance running strongly. For Bailey Duncan, there has been much drama surrounding his head. Last year, our end of season booklet promoted the "Bailey Bobble head". This year, he experienced a concussion that held him out of the All-League meet. His next few workouts were clearly sub-standard. But his District Meet performance proved he fully recovered and more than made up for it. His "perfect paced" race (straight 5:30's then a kick) propelled him to an individual State Meet Qualifying 11th place, thus impressing all runners and coaches in our League.
In October of 2011, Hannah Wright established her 5K PR at Lewisville Park. She did not get within 20 seconds of it last year. Her ambition to run 30 seconds faster this year motivated her towards serious off-season training. Her "Black Course" performance at the All-League meet gave strong evidence that she was finally ready to PR at District. But she woke up sick, feeling quite weak, unable to hold down food or water, and very concerned about being able to perform well. Determined to finish her career in style, she snuck many small doses of honey to energize a 15 seconds PR, thus preserving her 1st Team All-League status. A healthy Hannah would have reached that 30 second PR on her favorite course: Lewisville Park.