Team Fast Break, Chattanooga’s semi-professional post-collegiate running team, once again traveled to a Louisville, Kentucky road race and had another good showing as Patrick Hall, Andrew Dorn, and Alan Outlaw all finished in the top twenty at Saturday’s Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon.

 A few nights ago, I realized that I truly am an addict. I've joked about it for years. When I was a kid, I was addicted to baseball. It was a running joke in my family--"Will eats, breathes, drinks and sleeps baseball," my parents used to tell people. As I've grown up, my priorities--and addictions--have changed. Throughout high school, I have joked that I am "addicted" to running.

Then came last Thursday night. May 1, 2008. For the last month, I have been out of running with a stress fracture in the third metatarsal of my left foot. As a high school senior, that's been hard to swallow. However, throughout those weeks, I held out hope that somehow I would get the doctor's approval to return to running in time for our regional championship meet on Thursday, May 8. Thursday morning was the follow-up doctor's appointment.

According to message board reports, Georgetown University sophomore Andrew Bumbalough ran a sub-four minute mile at Yale University's Giegengack Invitational this afternoon.

Official Results In Article...

The weather cooperated for once and the races were competitive on Saturday at the 2007 TSSAA State Championship Cross Country meet.  The day started with the A/AA girls race, where defending champion, junior Jessica Duble from Chattanooga Christian School, ran away with the championship title. She took a commanding lead just before the two mile mark and never looked back.  The Baylor School men won their meet with a convincing twenty-two points.  Oak Ridge High swept the podium, the men won with forty-eight points, the ladies with forty-three. Sean Keveren won the AAA race by seven seconds over Matt Sonnenfeldt. Both are looking for a berth to Foot Locker Nationals. Defending National Champion Kathy Kroeger won the AAA girls race by over forty seconds, with Virginia Hine coming in second. Both represented Tennessee at Nationals last year, and both look to make a return.

The Baylor Red Raiders arrived at Greenway Farms this morning in Chattanooga, Tennessee rather inconspicuously. No buses painted with their school's name and logo. No big yellow school bus. Not even a team van. They showed up individually, most driving their own cars or car-pooling with a teammate. They didn't have a team tent, either. Nor did they have a sign proclaiming their team's location. Just a collection of duffel bags, water bottles, and spikes marked their team's base location for the day, on a weathered tennis court about four-hundred meters from where the rest of the fifteen teams present for the McCallie Invitational had set up shop for the day. After most of Baylor's mens team had arrived, a yellow car covered in bumper stickers with a bike rack on the back pulled in--ignoring the collegiate runners directing traffic--and parked next to the tennis court. Out climbed Van Townsend and his son, Skylar. Though lacking parades and other festivities often found when warriors leave for battle, the Red Raiders were ready to fight.

This past Saturday brought the arrival of one of my favorite times of the year--cross country invitational season. When the weather is crisp and clear and every single run, be it a training run, an interval workout, or a race, makes me feel on top of the world. There isn't much better than that.