A quick take on good news
Maybe the best-ever early-season run by a New Hampshire boy on native soil.
On Friday, which won't be remembered as a fond day in history by most Americans, a smattering of students from Concord High School and Trinity High School met for a cross-country race at Derryfield Park in Manchester, New Hampshire. With the spring sports season having been cancelled, this was the first competition in which most of the kids had participated since at least February. It was also the first race any of them had ever been in that required strict social-distancing protocols. No spectators were allowed. You know most of the revised nationwide norms concerning the enjoyment of public spectacles people actually want to watch.
I imagine it felt like a sanded-down production to some of the team members present, but one athlete showed such supreme focus that the turned in what was, adjusting only a little for circumstances, arguably one of the best early-season performances ever observed -- or at least timed -- in the Granite State: 15:57, plus unknown fractions of a second. Second place was 17:10.
That time and venue mean nothing to many of you, but Derryfield has long been the site of the N.H. State Divisional Championships, and until 2005 is served as the Meet of Champions venue the following weekend as well. It has also been used for the "New England Championships" two or three times, most recently on a muddy 2018 day.
The course has retained the same basic layout since I was a sophomore in high school in the fall of 1985. It might have been a few seconds slower because of two benches that had to jumped or stepped over that were eliminated sometime in the interim (I think they were there when I was coaching at Bishop Brady twenty years ago). At the time I graduated in 1988, only two New Hampshire kids had broken 16:00 at Derryfield, one of whom, Norm Kennedy, reached the Foot Locker (then Kinney) National Championships.
Some pretty good runners have come through the chute there. Some Derryfield times and current creds:
Ben True 15:17 (13:02 5K, 27:41 10K)
John Mortimer 15:24 (went on to place second at Foot Locker Nationals in 15:03 in 1994; 8:24 steeple, 28:46 10K)
Matt Downin 15:30 (he lost this race to Mortimer, bur won Foot Locker Nationals in 14:58; 28:08 10K)
Louis Luchini 15:29 (this performance won the 1998 New Englands, which for unrelated reasons formed the basis for my first-ever Running Times article; went on to be second at Foot Locker Nationals in 15:23 and later ran 13:25)
Eric Jenkins 15:32 (ran 13:18 in college, 13:05 since)
Guor Majak 15:45 (2:12 marathon, ran under the Olympic Flag for South Sudan; also Concord High)
Only 31 kids from New Hampshire have ever run faster than Eben Bragg did at Derryfield Park yesterday at championship-level meets; the list who have done at at the Manchester Invitational (usually held on the last Saturday in September) is significantly shorter, if not as easily located ot distilled. I'm almost positive no one has ever broken 16:00 in a dual or similarly small meet ar Derryfield, though I can't say definitively that this is the case.
Eben ran 16:04 in his most recent race here last October, and I have some insight into his training and fitness, so this wasn't a big shock. But running 5:08 pace at Derryfield usually means a first mile close to 5:05, 5:10 on the outside; Eben got there yesterday in 5:15, usually a sign of a 16:30 even for someone who hangs on okay.
Concord is the defending boys' Division I team champion, and Eben is the top returning individual. Based on these and other factors, I'll be writing about the team’s season for Podium Runner once it's over. In some ways this will recapitulate an assignment I was granted 20 years ago, with the important difference is that I'm not the coach this time. The team's next race is at regional juggernaut and Division 2 defending team champion Coe-Brown next Friday.
This was easily the best thing that happened to me or anyone I know on Friday.