Ryan Perkins has been the most improving athlete on the team during October. He ran a 36 second PR at the George Fox Classic. After that race, he set his main Target Goal as 25:30, which would be another 1:30 improvement. The next week, he ran the 2.9 mile course in 23:32, equivalent to just over that 1:30 improvement. He also had the goal to beat 15 runners at the All-League meet. Not only did he surpass that goal by arriving to the finish line before 20 runners all from other teams, the clock ticked just 6 seconds over 24 minutes as he crossed that line. WOW! That was effectively another 1:15 improvement from the week before! Ryan's October was amazing. He improved a total of 3 minutes and 30 seconds, surpassing his Bull's Eye target by well over a minute!
For Hannah Swigert, her best training efforts have been running side by side with fellow Panther Tanner Lees. Going into the All-League meet, we decided that an appropriate visualization model for her would be to envision the leaders of the race to have orange wavy hair. During the race as the lead pack of just 3 went by, the coaching staff actually loudly yelled things like "Great job, Tanner" and "Hannah, stay with Tanner", even though Tanner was obviously not in the race. More than likely, the other two girls and nearby spectators were confused, but after she finish in her finest race of her life, Hannah said it was helpful for her. Her 2nd place time of 19:36 was her first 5K under 20 minutes, the second fastest legitimate recorded Panther time in history.