Paul Short (Mall Cop): Big Green (Eggs) Goes Ham

Greetings runners, parents, fans, scholars. Silas Talbot ’15 here with the latest and greatest episode of The Men of Dartmouth. Superlatives aside, this will actually be a mere tribute to the best blog post ever written on this site because the original manuscript was lost in a routine maintenance check-up on my computer that culminated in a system reboot which cost me more than one unsaved document. As you are reading this post, I ask you to imagine words and phrases that not only impress you, but change the way you view Dartmouth running and thus life. Also I apologize on the rather late post, Steven has been dogging me all week to finish this, so here we go!

In the latest post on The Men of Dartmouth, the team was left licking our wounds from a bitter defeat against Syracuse at the Dartmouth Invite. After a tough three week training block, which included traditional workouts such as Skinripper, Grasse Road, and the workout formerly known as the Thetford fartlek, we really wanted to make a “bang!” at the Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh University.

In the past, this period has been the end of preseason, and the team has been able to focus solely on running workouts and three-hour lunches at Foco. Due to the scheduling change last year, however, this period now lands during the first several weeks of school, meaning lunches have been scaled back to two hours. As we are all student-athletes, we have had to balance schoolwork with a busy training schedule, but most of us have still been able to generously devote time to activities such as: watching movies with Silas, playing Nintendo with Silas, and going to late night Collis with Silas.

Anyways, after these three weeks, we were pretty fired up for Paul Short, as it is our first true race of the season and is a great opportunity to beat some fast teams. With a nine-man squad in the varsity race, many of us knew that we could run risky races in hopes of packing in as many guys in the top 30 as possible. With an unseasonably hot climate on race day, however, this all-or-nothing attitude led to some sizeable blow-ups.

Luckily, however, we managed to get enough good finishes with amazing results from Will Geoghegan ’14 in 3^rd and John Bleday ’14 in 7^th to round out a very strong front pack. Henry Sterling ’14 was in 25^th and I closely followed in 28^th. Curtis King ’16 rounded out the top 5 in 43^rd. These results yielded the best team result for the Dartmouth men at this meet, coming in 2^nd just 16 point behind nationally ranked Indiana and 4 points ahead of nationally ranked Georgetown. Also performing well in the Open race were freshmen Nathaniel Adams ’17 and Matt Herzig ’17, who finished back to back in 11^th and 12^th respectively. Bleday had to say on the matter, “The attitude of the team was exactly where it needed to be. People who needed to step up did so. Boom. You want more?” Dylan O’Sullivan ’15, who was also contacted, denied comment on the matter.

Somewhere around the mile. (Mangan photo)

Wet Willy! (Tim O'Dowd photo)

Johnner. (Tim O'Dowd photo)

Hurting and Hammering Hank. (Tim O'Dowd photo)

Yours truly, bringing it home. (Tim O'Dowd photo)

In all seriousness, this was a great early-season result for the team, and gives us the motivation to keep the ball rolling. This weekend was homecoming and the New England Championship at historic Franklin Park. I’m going to toss the pigskin to someone else on both of those, because Steve said I didn’t have to do anymore.

Silas Talbot ’15 over and out.