The Whippets represented at the final New York Road Runners Thursday Night at the Races at the Armory last night. Here are my partial/unofficial results taken off my watch -- official times won't show up on NYRR.org for probably a week or so...

800m

• ALEX cruised through in ~ 2:10
  
• PATRICK iced the competition in ~ 2:36
  
• RICH followed in ~ 2:37
  
• BENNY came home in ~ 2:41
  
• JOHNNY creamed his heat, but I missed getting his time, sorry!
  

10000m Relay (10 runners, 5 legs per runner, 200 meters per leg)

The WHIPPETS finished fourth in their heat in ~ 28:45, or about 4:38 minute mile pace. Representing were: Scott, Alex, Mark, Patty, Rich, Benny, Johnny, Masako (my personal hero), Levett (Alex's lifesaving friend) and Patrick. (We also had support on the sidelines from Joanna and Pam.)

Benny must have been up VERY late transcribing the handwritten splits onto this spreadsheet:
http://files.meetup.c...

Benny, you totally rock for doing that! Looking them over..

• Alex was Mr. Consistency -- his slowest and fastest times were within 0.9 seconds. He also had the fastest average split of everyone, 29.0.
  
• Rich, Patty and I were more consistent than most, with our slowest and fastest times within 2.6-3.1 seconds of each other. Rich and I had the 4th and 2nd fastest average splits, 32.9 and 30.5, respectively. (Levett was 3rd fastest, 32.1.)
  
• Among our women, Masako was the fastest, averaging 37.8 and faster than some of our boys.
  
• Benny was like a downhill skier -- while everyone else was slowing down, his splits got faster in each leg.
  

Fun fun fun! Anyone who skipped this REALLY missed out.

everyone did a great job in the relay. I can't believe you finished it in under a half hour!!

Good work to everyone that ran the 800 also.

Isn't it fun to run on that track!!! You almost feel like an olympian.

Great recap, Scott!

Definitely enjoyed doing the 800m with my friendly rival Whippets Benny and Patrick.

The relay was ridiculously fun. While the first 3 laps were fine, the last two hurt my lungs and legs a lot. I'm glad we were able to pull in last minute runners: Johnny who was only expecting to run the 800m but happily joined us for the relay; Masako who had no idea she was going to run until 2 minutes before the run; and Alex's friend Levett (Labat?) who came in last second to make us a strong 10. Awesome showing. I'm impressed we all pulled in sub-:40 laps!

The relay really was a blast! I can't wait to try it at Icahn Stadium under more forgiving conditions!

Just to add to Josh and Rich's comments -- I too was pleasantly surprised that we finished the race with such a good time for a bunch of half-serious non-sprinters.

I'm such a dork that I started training for this three weeks ago, when we were doing the 200m speed workout on Thursday night (Rich, Mark and Patty were there, among others). I was feeling my lungs and thighs burning just to get to 36 second 200s. I knew from looking at the last year's results that we had to average 33-35sec/leg as a team just to avoid ending up dead last in our heat. How were we going to pull this off?

I don't know how we did it (except it surely helped that Alex and his friend Levett were on the team), but I guess adrenaline really works wonders. Our average split was around 34.5 sec per leg! One thing I did notice is we didn't start out too fast as a group -- we were at 33.6 sec for the first leg, and 33.7 for the second -- so when we slowed down a little toward the end, we didn't just up and die (though I wanted to).

Nice work, gang!

Scott

It was a really, really fun time. Definitely inspired me to start training a lot harder and more consistently. Thanks for putting the results together, Benny.

Good job guys!!! I'm so impressed with you all for doing such a kick ass job last night! And I loooove all those pictures. I wish I could have made it! Next year...next year.

Great recap, Scott! I didn't know each lap was being timed and recorded… everyone was consistent and i slowed down quite a bit..

I was so intimidated by all the fast runners at Armory and I did not want to run, but saying No was not really an option yesterday.. i had never really run track and it actually felt so good to run on that track.. it’s so soft! I regretted I had never gone to Thursday training runs and I even did not have time to warm up before the relay. I had no idea what it would be like to run 200m hardest and just followed Patrick advice--“just run at full speed all the way“…the first two laps were fine..but after the third lap, I was ready to go home…I am glad that we did great!

It was big emotional support that I had all the fast whippets to run before me and Levett (super-fast Alex’s friend) and Patrick after me. Big thanks to Joanna and Pamella for cheering on! and to johnny for recovery food--I probably could not have recovered so fast without your ibuprofen, energy bar and gatorade.

Pam made a video of the 800m race Benny, Patrick and I were in (in HD!):
http://vimeo.com/9772...

My heart beats pretty fast watching it.

Best video ever recorded.