Diary

Wesley
Thomas

Past Entries

April 5, 2004

Last weekend, our team got split up. Some of us went to Duke and some went to Sewanee.

I went to Duke with about 12 other people. It was basically the relays and a few distance people. I was particularly excited about going to Duke because I have a friend who attends there. We've been best friends since fifth grade. That's a long time.

The Duke meet was kind of weird because we didn't perform the way we expected, but we had a good time. I think all that pressure of going up against the big boys got the best of me, so I wasn't at my best. I still had fun competing against such good teams, though.

But I can't let y'all click anywhere else without letting y'all in on some funny stuff. Whether we perform well or not, something always happens behind the scenes that gets written in that big ol' book of memories we carry around.

The van rides there and back were amusing, as always. The big surprise was that we didn't get lost...majorly. We just had a little trouble finding our way around Duke, and that's good. We're working out all those navigational difficulties before UAAs go down in Pittsburgh in a few weeks. Topics on the vans ranged from affirmative action (which was completely random) to the Final Four, to where to eat.

The hotel we inhabited was nice. Potential Emory recruits: join the track team because if anything, you'll get put up in a nice place at least once in your life. Nice rooms, nice place, and nice food, all just nice!

Duke itself is a strange place. Every single building looks alike, and they all look gothic. Not a place you want to walk around at night. You might get stabbed by a knight on a horse. Emily (from the women's team) and I met up with my friend Evan and took a tour of the campus after the two of us had run that Friday.

We both were disappointed with our times. We had to run into a hurricane-speed wind with a virtual snowstorm behind it; it was freezing. The next day, they let everybody run with the wind and the weather was much warmer.

Anyway, we didn't feel like being bothered by some people on the team. Unfortunately, we neglected to let anybody know where we were going, so when we got back at 5:45 p.m. (we thought we had to be back at 7:00), all the sprinters were gone and we had to stay and wait on the distance runners to go out to dinner. It was cool, though. We eventually ended up at Pizza Hut with the rest of the sprinters and things were okay.

Some (G-rated) kertanging went on that night with people jumping on beds like they're kids. Two in particular, Meghan and John, just fought. Meghan won because that girl could beat anybody up, even me (and nobody ever beats me).

The next day, we finished up our competition at Duke with the relays. We were mediocre, and I'll take all the blame for it. I've got a psychological issue; I seem to perform better at smaller meets and not as well at the big
meets. Something to work on, I guess.

Meanwhile, after the 4x100 relay, we went to eat lunch...not anywhere close to Duke. We could have just come back to Georgia to eat! We ended up going back to where our hotel was (which was already about 15-20 minutes away from Duke) to eat at... Subway. I think I'm slowly turning into a Subway sandwich, but that's another story. It was good, though, because we got to have a say in what kind of subs we wanted.

Overall the meet was pretty under par, specifically my performance, but bad meets happen. Hopefully it's out of my system so I can get ready for next week, when we end up back in North Carolina.

Wesley Thomas is a senior from Dallas, Texas. He would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.