In His Own Words: Joey Santillo

This past week is always one of my favorite weeks of the season, the Minooka Flight Invite. This is the home invite for our team where we get to run in front of our friends, teachers, and alumni. All the talk was about who would be where in the lineup at the end of the week. I love how competitive some of our guys get during the workouts to possibly move up in the roster. I made sure I reminded a few of them to not look to in depth at where they were though because the season is still pretty young and they still have time to work. It’s always a week like no other.

This was a week where I got real friendly with limestone paths. A love/hate relationship for, myself. They’re great because it’s a soft surface, but I hate staying in a straight path for the whole run. Running on paths all week made me excited for some hills during our workout later in the week. Also, Coach Gummerson gets more fired up than he usually is for hills and having him so amped always makes the workouts that much better.    
 
Saturday was definitetly bittersweet for me. I love the opportunity to run on my home course, at my home invite, in front of some Minooka fans. However, all week I kept looking back at my years running in this meet and it makes me sad to run it for the last time. I knew I’d have to go out with a bang. I’ve never ran any of my better times on my home course and I set out to change that. In the end, I finished first in the championship flight with a 14:54 setting a new Minooka course record. I’m really happy I got to finish the week how I wanted to, and I'm excited for this next week!

More Coverage