Enyaeva Michelin went right to work as soon as the gun went off
There's always something savage about the Pat Savage invitational every year. Last year it was the extreme weather conditions. The heavy rain and cold temperatures made the course a muddy mess with runners coming through with dirt covered bodies. Coming from me, an athlete who experienced the suffering, it was the most vicious course.
But then there was this year. It wasn't the weather that was uncontrollable this time, it was the athletes. There wasn't a single team that was silent while Childish Gambino, Survivor, and Silento echoed around the gym. With insane burst of happiness, runners from every team gathered in the middle of the gym to create a mosh pit filled with bottle flipping, bad dancing, and momentary friendships.
There was no doubt that the gym was the place to be this year, but the course was on fire with a new meet record. Although the course has seen slightly faster times, this was a first for this meet. Enyaeva Michelin (Sr., Evanston) smashed the meet record with a time of 16:41. Nobody could keep with her as she came through the first two miles in 11:12. It was as if she was the only one racing. It was just her and the clock. She beat herself and the clock as she raced with strength written across her face.
From start to finish her race was predictable, in a good way of course. The other races didn't seem to follow that same pattern. To start the day, we had the boys freshman race take flight. The leaders of the first mile were of St. Pat's and Oswego East runners. Tyler King of Willowbrook was resting comfortably in third at the mile mark. He managed to pull through and win with a 12 second lead. He is someone to watch out for as he is already running sub 11 minutes as a freshman.
After the freshman and sophomore races, the big dogs came out. Well little dogs because a lot of them were relatively short. At the start of the girls race Bodak Yellow was blasting before the gun went off. It was only fair that I changed to lyrics to fit the situation. These expensive, these is red bottoms, these is runner shoes. They put those shoes to work. As earlier mentioned Michelin shattered the girls varsity record. Fatima Giron (So., Round Lake) was not expected. She had only ran under 18 minutes once, just scratching the surface. 17:47 was her time as showed that this was gonna be a her season to be recognized.
Boys varsity was interesting as well. John McNabola (Sr., Chicago Francis Parker) and Conor Perreault (Sr., Niles North) respectively, ran a great race although there was no PR for either athlete. McNabola and Perreault were leading the top pack and began to break away just before the two-mile checkpoint. As the made their way to the track to finish the race, McNabola was the first to come and finish up at a 14:55 as Perreault was only 10 seconds behind.
Overall the day was beautiful. I traded in my jokes for the reenactments of High School Musical scenes with other teams which may or may not be worse than my jokes. Hopefully there are more meet records and personal records to come soon. With the season getting ready to come to a close in a month or so, prepare to watch these runners break through barriers.