Getting there

Our journey to the starting line at Paul Short was nothing short of epic, in terms of nail-biting stress. Let us count the ways:

1. Bus departure time of 5:15 a.m. Except for me, Schab and a few other crazies, this is an ungodly hour. Mix in wind-driven heavy rain that soaked us all to the bone, and it made for quite a wake-up call.

2. A 90-minute accident/traffic jam on Interstate 78 in New Jersey. What started out as a nuisance turned into a teeth-gnashing experience as we all wondered if we would make it to the starting line.

3. After the delay cleared, it was smooth sailing to Lehigh -- or so we thought. Just as we got to the exit, THAT was backed up for about a half-hour due to a flooded road.

4. The open men's and women's races at 10 a.m. and 10:10 a.m. were blown. Now, it was a matter of minutes if we would make the men's varsity race at 11 a.m. That's right. Do the math. We were on that bus for more than 5 hours! After navigating our detour to the course, it was determined that the varsity men would have to jump out and make a run for the meet.

5. Upon arrival at the meet, the first order of business was getting the men's varsity situated, and seeing what the deal was with the open/JV runners.

6. The JV men were notified with about 10 minutes to spare that they could race with the varsity at 11 a.m. A tough deal and they made the best of it.

7. All the women raced together at 11:45 a.m., and they had adequate time to get ready for their race. So that was a good thing!

The word that comes to mind for today was "resilience." It was great to see the team be so resilient and deal with these issues. Sure, there were some injury and illness issues that caused problems, and some runners just didn't have great days considering all that occurred.

But everyone did their best and made the best of a crazy situation.