Author Archives: JerryLukins

Akron Invitational

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.

Here is a link to the video on You Tube.

Dual Meet vs. Akron

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.

Link to 800 Meter Run on YouTube.com.

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.

Link to 4 x 400 Relay Video on YouTube.com.

Back issues update

I have an appointment to see my neurosurgeons PA on Monday, but the pain was so severe and relentless yesterday that I requested Nikki take me to the ER at OSU. I was admitted for observation overnight and scheduled for an MRI overnight. I will get the results later this morning and I should be discharged tomorrow morning as well.

Christmas 2017

This Christmas I didn’t get to see Nikki or the kids. It seems everyone is busy with their own lives and the only time they could schedule a gathering was the only time of the year I get to see my cousins and Aunts and Uncles and I had already planned on seeing them several month before. I hope this isn’t going to be a new trend.

More back issues

My back started causing me problems again when I woke up on the 17th of December with severe pain in my back and my sciatica. It appears to be the same type of pain I was experiencing from two years ago that lead to me having surgery at the end of April in 2016. Let’s hope this time it doesn’t require surgery

Thanksgiving 2017

This Thanksgiving was different than most.  We traveled down to Cincinnati the Sunday before Thanksgiving to visit with them.  Ashley came along as well and we brought our dogs for the first time to visit Braxton at his home.   I was scheduled 2 months ago to work on an upgrade to production that day and my tasks were running late and I ended up driving myself later.  As soon as I finished my migration tasks, I left and wasn’t 20 minutes on the road when the team I was helping out was reporting an error and asking for my help determining the cause.  I ended spending most of my time at Stephanie’s and Marcus’ on my laptop trying to figure out their issue, which later turned out to be a missed task on their end which prevented their system from talking to our system.

We had beef that Nikki cooked up before we left and it was delicious.  I then was able to enjoy a little time socializing with the family and watching the dogs play.  Braxton has so much energy he wears our girls out!  I was the first one to head out as we were still trying to figure the production issue and I had to get to bed as I worked at 6:00 am the following morning.  Almost the entire time traveling down and back, I was on support calls.  I had originally told the family the only day I couldn’t go was the 19th.  But it was determined that was the only day they could do Thanksgiving and it was miserable for me as I was unable to participate much and made it easy for everyone on the team to point fingers at me at the time, even though the issue was unrelated to our team.

Jonny came home Tuesday night and he ran in the Annual Granville Turkey Trot race.  There were almost 2689 runners in the race and Jonny got to see a lot of his old High School team mates.  He took 2nd place behind Tyler Otterstead who was Jonny’s team mate in high school when he was a freshman and Tyler was a senior.  Tyler runs for Columbia University now.

Jonny then went over to Alyssa’s for Thanksgiving dinner and Nikki and I were home alone for the rest of Thanksgiving day with the dogs.

Jonny runs an 8K at the MAC Championships

It’s the end of the season for Jonny as he ran in the Mid American Conference Cross Country Championships held at Miami University in Oxford, Oh.  This time in Oxford was very different than when we were there earlier in the season.  Earlier is so hot they ran early to try to avoid the 90 degree heat.  This time it was windy wet and low 40’s.  Parts of the course had standing water from the rain the had gotten leading up to race time.  At least it didn’t rain during the race.

Jonny completed the 8K course in 27:11.7 and placed 74th out of 81 participants. The official results can be found here at TFRRS.

This completes Jonny’s career as a cross country runner as his coach is going to take the mid distance track runners out of competing in the fall in cross country in the upcoming years.  We are going to miss watching and cheering him on in races in the fall.  He has always been fun to watch run.

Here is the video I took of his final race.

Jonny runs at the Penn State National Open

Jonny ran at the Penn State Nation Open today in State College, PA at Penn State. The campus was very nice and beautiful and the event was held on the Blue and White Gold Course.

This race was a 5.2 mile race instead of an 8K race which is 4.97 miles, so this would be Jonny’s longest race yet.  He was racing against schools all across the country including Penn State, Oklahoma State, Villanova, Cornell, North Carolina, University of California Davis, Akron, Bucknell, Lehigh, Duquesne, Loyola, William and Mary, and Kent State.

Jonny ended up 113 out of 131 runners with a time of 27:57. At the 5K mark he was 119, so he passed 6 more runners in the final 3+ Kilometers of the race.  The official results can be found here on Athletic.net.

After the race he said he wasn’t feeling well and thought he may have been sick.

Here is the video I took of the race.

2017 All Ohio Cross Country Championships

Jonny ran in his third collegiate cross country race and his second 8K race today at Cedarville University located in Cedarville, Ohio.  This is the biggest collegiate race in the state of Ohio.  All colleges and universities are invited from all divisions.  Only 5 Universities in the state didn’t show up with their varsity team.  Two of those teams sent their running clubs instead.  Jonny was excited for this race, as we was going to be able to see all his friends from high school that went on to run cross country at the next level in the state of Ohio.

Stephanie came up from Cincinnati to watch him race and brought her puppy Braxton as well.  After the race she came up to visit for the weekend.

Of the 38 Men’s varsity teams that attended Kent State came in 6th overall, placing 4th out of the 7 Division I schools.  Jonny placed 114th overall out of 325 runners in the Men’s Varsity race with a time of 26:52.9, which averages out to a 5:24.5 average mile pace.  In Division I he placed 44th out of 68 runners.  Out of Division I runners at the varsity level Jonny placed 6th out of 17th runners.  Overall out of freshmen runners in the Varsity race Jonny fisnished 15th out of 96 freshmen.

It was a fun race to watch as it reminded me of some of the big high school races Jonny used to run in.

The official results can be found here.

This meet they live streamed and the event and then offered the live stream on demand, which can be found here.