Stephanie and Marcus are going to Michigan to do some camping and have asked Nikki and I to watch Braxton. We agreed and picked him up on Wednesday as tomorrow, Thursday, we have to drive up to Kent State to pick up Jonny. I went from work to meet Stephanie to pick him up as that was going to save me an extra hour of driving. When I got home Zoey and Penny were so surprised and happy to see him. The dogs all played well, but Penny had to be put away a couple of times because when she is done playing Braxton just keeps trying to harass her into playing more and Penny shows her teeth and growls. We don’t know how far Penny would go, but never want it to go beyond that anyway. After a bit of rest Penny is usually ready to play with him again for a while.
[Update 5-14-2018]
All the dogs have gotten along great. Both of our dogs play with Braxton and sometimes they are both against him, but they are all having fun and he is so quick he can fend them both off at the same time. Nikki and I just sit and watch them play and its very entertaining. Braxton is a runner, so we have had to keep him on a leash every time he goes out. Stephanie left a 30 foot training leash and I have been able to let all the dogs out and tether Penny and Braxton together. Penny and Braxton both understand and happily walk around together. There are times when Penny lays down and when Braxton gets near the end of his leash she gets up and walks around with him. She wanted to come in house once and it turned into a tug of war and she pulled him closed enough to the house where she could lay down and “keep an eye” on him.
Jonny’s lingering injury has cut his track season short as he has been put on two weeks of rest again with only two weeks left in the season. He is not racing this Saturday and next week in the MAC Championships. He never got close to his high school times this season and ran the entire season with a nagging leg injury. This is the second year in a row although this time it’s the opposite leg. He will focus on recovery this summer and get back in shape later in the summer for next year.
We were taking Jonny back to Kent State University and had just started our trip on SR-16 eastbound just past the Longaberger Basket Building and were stopped in heavy traffic at the light at Marne Road about 15-20 cars back. We had been stopped for about 5 seconds when we were rear ended. There wasn’t much visible damage other than the bumper cover panel had a puncture in it as well as some scratches and the panel had popped out of the quarter panels. We had Jonny call the police since Nikki was complaining about neck pain. We wanted an official report. Nikki was upset and the other drive had nothing but excuses. No Appology, asking if everyone was OK, or anything like that. She had told me she was messing around putting her sunglasses on when she looked up traffic was stopped so she changed lanes to avoid hitting the car in front of her and hit us instead. The funny thing about that story is that it was raining hard enough to have the wipers on high and it was dark due to the cloud cover. Not sure why she felt she needed sunglasses on. I think she was texting. Within minutes her husband shows up to the accident scene and starts pounding on the back of my car to pop the panels back in to make it look like there was less damage before the police showed up. I got our of my car and asked him to stop because he was most likely breaking tabs off the panels if everything isn’t lined up perfectly. He also popped in all the panels on her vehicle as well. Luckily I took some pictures of the panel on my side before he popped them back in. I felt like popping him in the head as he wasn’t respecting my wishes to stop.
The Sheriff showed up and took our statements and I showed him pictures of the damage caused before the other drivers husband without my permission started punching my car. We got our police report and are definitely taking the car in to get it looked at and at least fix the minor damage.
Jonny ran at Jessie Owens Stadium at Ohio State University in the Jessie Owens Track Classic. There was a wide variety of schools there and this being Jonny’s third week of full training we were hoping to see some improvement from last weeks performance. My parents made the trip down to Columbus to watch him run. Unfortunately they were unable to talk to Jonny before or after the race as they had to leave after he was done running because they were parked in a stripped zone next to the handicap parking which was occupied by a coach bus.
Jonny got off to his normal start and settled into the back of the pack from the far outside lane. At the 200 meter mark he worked up to 8th from 9th place. At 400 meters he moved up to 7th place as he was at the back of the lead pack. Everyone else started their kick around 400 to 500 meters, but held off until about 600 meters before starting his kick. Last week at Tennessee he started his kick around the 500 meter mark and ran out of gas about 100 meters later due to his lack of conditioning from his required rest recovering from his previous leg injury. The rest of the pack moved away from him, but as he started his kick at 600 meters he started gaining on other racers and finally took over 6th place with about 30 meters. His time was 1:57.26 and overall he finished 27th out of 33 racers.
After the race he commented that he felt a lot better in the last couple hundred meters. He wasn’t confident after last week that he was going to be able to finish hard the last 300 meters, but when he started his kick later than the rest of the group his conditioning was starting to show improvement and he was able to finish strong and competitive. His times should get better over the next couple of weeks leading up to the Mac Championship in Buffalo, NY if he can improve his times and earn a spot.
After the Tennessee Relays Jonny was able to spend some time of Nikki, Stephanie and I. We waited for him to finish cheering on his team and get back to his hotel and shower. We finally left around 10:30PM and headed for Pigeon Forge where we had reservations at The Inn at Christmas Place. It was a Bavarian hotel with a Christmas Theme year around. Other than the Christmas decorations everywhere the hotel was nice and the room and beds were comfortable. The omelets, bacon and sausage were good, and after we all ate we packed up and headed out to the The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The concierge at the hotel gave us a couple of recommendations and we decided on the Grotto Falls trail which is 2.6 miles round trip to the Falls and back. We headed into Gatlinburg and because it was early and shops were still closed, we drove through without any issues. We turned left at light #8 and headed out to the trailhead. As soon as we left town and were in the National Park, we saw wild turkey everywhere and even saw a few whitetail deer.
Turkey were seen everywhere in the park.
The scenery was beautiful although we could still see the scars from the fire which started in November of 2016. We stopped along a lookout and took a few pictures and headed up the rest of the way.
Lookout on the way to the trailhead to Grotto Falls
We make it up to stop #5 which was the trailhead to Grotto Falls. We say lots of beautiful streams and running water on the way to the falls and saw a few local species of birds and insects.
Little stream coming out of the undergrowth
Jonny climbing off the trail
The falls were pretty and as they were posing for pictures, Jonny got a hand full of water and splashed Stephanie which you can see in the video.
Stephanie returned the favor which you can see in the photos below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BacJtqg-ce4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BacJtqg-ce4
Just below the falls
We continued on beyond the falls for a bit and then headed back down where we spotted this guy sunning on a log.
Garter Snake sunning.
The kids wanted to see a black bear and we didn’t see any along the trail so before heading back to drop Jonny off with his team at the meet, we drove over to Cade’s Cove and took the auto tour. The entire loop is 11 miles, but we got stuck in a terrible traffic jam along the single lane one way road. We got up to where all the excitement was and the kids and Nikki got out to view the Mama bear and her cubs. We stayed for a few minutes and then headed back on the paved road to finish our trip. We got caught behind some people leisurely driving along at under 5 MPH and it was going to take way to long to get back. We got off the main loop and took a dirt road shortcut over to a place where we could take Rich Mountain Road out of the park. Rich Mountain Road is nothing more than a forest road that is gravel and switchbacks and another one way. We decided to take the chance and headed out of the park using that road. It wasn’t bad as there were no ruts or anything and my car handled it well as long as we kept it under 25 MPH. Along the way we saw a pack of wild boar and 100 feet further down the road down the ravine there was another mother bear and cubs.
Wild boar on Rich Mountain Road
Shortly thereafter we got out of the park and to a paved two way road. We had Jonny back to the University of Tennessee an hour before his bus left and we headed out of Knoxville for home. We dropped Stephanie at home and said hello to Marcus and Braxton again. We at dinner with Stephanie and Marcus and then headed home and arrived after 11:00PM where we were greeted by happy dogs that we didn’t totally abandon them.
Jonny ran at the Tennessee Relays held Friday the 13th at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. Nikki and I picked up Stephanie in Cincinnati and headed down to Knoxville to watch Jonny run the 800 meter run. He ran in the 3rd of 4 heats. He ran well for the first 650 meters and then fell off the pace as he had only had a couple of weeks of full training under his belt due to his leg injury late in the indoor season. He ran a 1:58 in the 84 degree weather and placed 27th out of 30 overall.
The University of Tennessee is a very nice campus located on hills near the Tennessee River. The outdoor facility was very nice and the competition included a number of big schools from several states away, including Tennessee, Mississippi State, Indiana, South Carolina, Duke, Virginia Tech, Southern Illinois, Penn, Mid Tennessee State, Eastern Michigan and of course Kent State.
Natalie Price was there representing Indiana along with her parents Nancy and Hugh. It was nice to be able to talk to them for a while. We haven’t seen them all together since Jonny and Natalie had their Graduation Party together.
Jonny ran the 800 meter run at the Akron University Northeast Quad. The meet was moved indoors due to the weather. We went to their indoor facility which we have been to many times before for High School and an earlier indoor meet.
We were watching the sprints and jumping field events. They were getting ready to run the 800 meter run and we were waiting and waiting. I was checking the scored events and noticed they scored the women’s 800 meter run. We asked and found out that they were running the distance events at the outdoor track. We quickly made our way to the track across the street and Jonny had just finished his first lap of the race.
He ended up with a time of 1:57.06 and was 5th overall out of 17 athletes.
I only got the last 200 meters of his 800 meter race on video.
Jonny ran in a home meet this weekend, the Kent State National Qualifier. He only ran in the 800 meter run. There were several schools that participated including Pittsbutg, Akron, Buffalo, Michigan, Ohio, Ashland and Toledo. Jonny ran in the 2nd heat, the faster heat, against a total of 17 runners. He finished 3rd overall with a new personal best time of 1:54.71 for indoor. With his time he is ranked 419th in the nation at the Division I NCAA Level. He is also ranked 1277 in the mile run according to DirectAthletics.com, the official NCAA ranking site.
I took some video at ground level, and I had to work my around the full stands, so there are a few moments where I had to change positions and pick up the racers again as they came down the home stretch straight.
Jonny ran the 800 at the Akron Invitational. Unfortunately I got the flu and was unable to make the trip due to a fever, headache, nausea and overall soreness. Nikki did make the trip though and stayed all day as there was a chance that Jonny was also going to run the last event of the day, the mens 4×400, which the team ended up not starting. There were 23 teams in attendance and they split up the early sessions, the blue division from the later session the gold division. Jonny wasn’t considered a top tier gold division in the 800 which was a single heat, Instead he ran in the fastest heat of the blue division. He ran a 1:55.99 which placed him 3rd out of 20 in his division and he would have placed 9th overall out of 31 if they timed the 3 heats, 1 gold division and 2 blue division, together. Not bad for a freshmen!
Nikki was kind enough to take some video when she was there with her phone. Here is the video she took.
Jonny ran in a home dual meet against The University of Akron Zips today. Jonny was only scheduled to run the 800 Meter run, but was asked to stay warm for the 4×400 as he may be needed to step in for one of the sprinters if they were injured. As luck would have it, Jonny was asked to run in the 4×400 on the C team of sprinters for the last race of the evening. I’m glad Nikki and I stuck around or we would have missed him running in the 4×400.
His first race was the 800 Meter run and he ended up in 4th place overall, 3rd for the team missing 2nd for the team by 0.01 of a second. He would have earned points if he was second on the team. His time for the race was 1:57.53, definitely not his best time, but not a bad time either for not racing in an 800 since early last June.
Here is the video of the 800 Meter Run. Sorry for the terrible camera work. I had to spin around on the bleachers while trying to keep him in frame and keep from falling off the top bench seat I was standing on.
I only took video of Jonny’s leg of the 4 x 400 race and it is below. We weren’t sure he was actually going to run until about 20 seconds before the race started. I didn’t catch the beginning of the race and they still didn’t have a 4th runner on the team so they dropped out after 3 legs. Jonny’s coaches told him he was timed for his 400 meters at 50.9, but that he actually took a couple of steps longer in the hand off box at the end of his leg because his runner took off early.
