Independent League, Penntrack and More

I'm not sure if Sam Hibbs is going to be taking his show on the road to nationals in a few weeks, but I hope he does. He did the strong work out front to make that race happen and his strength is definitely longer. Hibbs also ran his last two 3200s of the season relatively uncontested so there seems to more room to improve if he wants to go for it.

But the real story here is not Sam Hibbs, but Dustin Wilson and more importantly perhaps Ben Ritz. Ritz, the Junior who appears perhaps a few spots too low on etrain's top 50 list, dropped a 4:12 massive PR when he beat out Dustin Wilson over 1600m. Ritz had a nice 3200m PR around 9:22ish and some solid races on the track, but this really comes from out of left field. He has made steady improvements all year long and could be very dangerous in an independent league that looks pretty deep out front next year. Wistar and the little Ritz, added PRs to the mix as well.

As for Wilson this time is significant for him as well. He is definitely a 5k guy, and almost certainly is shooting for that come nationals, but having 4:13 speed in the open 1600m is a nice weapon to have in your back pocket. He hasn't really thrown down any really fast times so far this spring, which makes me think he is working hard to peak at Nationals. He could run a very scary 5k or 3200m. Possibly sub 9 over 2 miles considering he ran 9:02 last year and he PR was only roughly 4:16 in the open (indoors over a full mile he ran 4:17 and I converted it down). He had a couple splits around 4:14 and 4:13 chasing people in DMR's for CHA, but there is a difference between chasing on a relay leg and running a tough 1600m effort like this.

Great work all around for these guys in a meet that may go right over some people's heads. Major props.

Hopefully we will see some good performance's at Henderson as well. If anyone has a Henderson Distance Festival Performance list for the high schoolers let me know.

Anyway I just wanted to say that I wish I had a penntrack account so I could defend CatSmasher. If he reads my blogs at all, I would just like to say that you are getting some unnecessary lip from the PTXC guy on there. It should say Ben Ritz and Dustin Wilson, no offense to Sam Ritz, he ran a great race, but Ben was the winner of the race! And PTXC talked to CatSmasher like he was oblivious, not the other way around. I support you CatSmasher, and if Penntrack hadn't deleted both of my accounts I would have posted to your support I promise, but unfortunately I can't.

Lastly, I came to the exciting conclusion recently that a lot of schools have different readers on the blog. So I thought it might be cool if I tried to make a ongoing list of schools the blog reaches. If you are interested I'm going to make a blank post and comment on that one with what school you go to/graduated from and we will see what kind of readership we have here on the blog. You don't need to leave your name unless you want to.

Thanks,
Peace