Josh Simpson 2nd at NACAC

Hey guys...Josh here, just wanted to thank all the well wishers from this past weekend ,while I was down in Orlando. Looks like I brought some of the Florida weather back with me for this Monday. So get out there and Enjoy your runs!! I wanted to come on here and give a little recap of the NACAC race. Who better to tell the story than me. So for you that want to know the details...Read on...If you dare.

First off I'd like to say that running as a Team again was amazing. I haven't had the opportunity to feel that team unity in a LONG time. And doing it with Team USA was a special bonus. My teammates, Thomas Morgan, Travis Laird, and Ben Bruce made the trip fantastic. So... Race day came in Orlando and as we sat around watching the junior girls, and junior boys, and senior girls get thumped by Canada. Watching USA get beaten down every race made me just want to kill our race that much more. There was a sense of pride for our countries running that made me feel like I could take on all Canucks ;) lol. And the added bonus would be that my former, almost, teammate Robbie Watson was on Canada's team.

The Race started off hard, with Robbie Watson of Canada taking the lead while Ben Bruce and I trailed right behind him. As the 1st loop came to and end there was still a big pack of guys. After the second loop Robbie had extended his lead some with myself and Canada's Dylan Wykes right on my shoulder. At this point the race was probably in favor of Canada. The 3rd loop didn't change much, other than Robbie had extended his lead a little more, to about 20 meters. With myself and Dylan Wykes chasing behind with my teammate Thomas Morgan slightly behind. The extremely Hot day was making the race pretty hard and gutsy as making a crazy move may have doomed any of us in the scorching heat. And that may have helped cause what happened on the 4th loop. With about 1500 meters left in the race, Thomas Morgan came up on my side and we both made a strong move around Leader Robbie Watson and we really started to push in the last 1k of the race. We had started making the gap on Dylan and Robbie over that last 1k, and coming into the finish it was real exciting knowing we had broke them and even more exciting hearing the announcer call out both of our names and say how we were crushing the course record. Thomas finished pumping his arms and I finished behind him clapping my hands in the air and hugging him at the line cause we knew we had won the race for the USA. Our teammate Ben Bruce ran a hell of a last 2k as he virtually tied Robbie Watson and picked up 5th place while Travis Laird took 6th place right behind him. It was very exciting when we were all done because even as we were racing some baseball players were cheering, GO USA. And then everyone came over and they were all really excited that we had done it. I wish I had won the race, but to tell you the truth it didnt bother me at all that Thomas got away from me a little, cause for once in years and years I felt that Team unity that we all shared. A Great Weekend for me and I'm proud that we could do that for The USA.

Now everyone else reading this, get out there and train hard! Be the best you can be. You can only do that by training hard in the season and off-season. Strive to be better than your dreams. And if you work, you will amaze yourself. Best of Luck to you all.