A season with the New Jersey high school powerhouse, part II.

See part I of the series: A Streak and a Goal.

Benchmarks
The sun is beginning to set on Aug. 29 as the CBA runners trickle into the Track House, a barn disguised as a locker room on the Lincroft, New Jersey, campus of CBA. Some are nervous, some excited, most are both. Tonight, they’ll battle a time trial.

They walk by their coach, Tom Heath, who is sitting on a stool in front of the doorway, leafing through a stack of papers. The writing is barely legible, made even less so because he’s looking at photocopies of pages and pages of lists. The lists are the results of the 2-mile time trial, the one that CBA runs every year at the end of the summer. Each year is documented, and only Heath can decipher the writing. The data goes way back. The last page has the results from 1978, when the top five runners averaged 10:31.6.

Times have changed. The 2012 edition of the team set the course record with a 9:29.2 top-five average.

..... (Continued on Running Times)

CONTINUE READING ON THE RUNNING TIMES

<p style="text-align: center;"> Clippings from around the internet involving New Jersey athletes and or track, field, and cross country.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="http://nj.milesplit.com/articles/series/851-nj-clippings"><img alt="" src="http://cache.milesplit.com/user_files/369316/68152/new_jersey_clippings.png" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; width: 500px; height: 180px;" /></a></p>