CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA -- Rain greeted campers on the first day of the Ragged Mountain Running Camp. However, the campers were able to find some positives out of the weather as they got to run with and meet many new people.

The camp started off with registration and assignment of rooms. All campers are assigned to a suite of 4-5 rooms with 2 people in each room. While some are roomed with familiar teammates or friends, others are roomed with people who they are meeting for the just the first time.

The camp also has a quality list of counselors with great running background and knowledge. Erin Swain, the 2000 AAA State girls champion and Foot Locker South champion is one of the girls counselors. Other well-known counselors on the boys side are Western Albemarle alums Mike Fox and Jeremy Cadle. Fox is entering his last year of competition with James Madison University and Cadle is just beginning his college career after redshirting his first year of running at the Georgetown University.

The first run of the camp was an easy 30-40 minute run with the counselors around the beautiful UVA campus. The campers were all drenched by the rain, but quickly went to shower and dry up as they were excited for the night's events.

After the dinner, all of the campers and camp staff went into the "lounge". Camp t-shirts and schedules were handed out first. Then camp director, Buz Male started off things by just going over the basics on what he expected of the campers and other miscellaneous tidbits. Then he introduced the entire staff briefly as shortly after Mr. Male finished his talk, each counselor gave all the campers one bit of advice for take.

The best advice out of all the counselors was arguebably by Counselor Niles, the head cross country at Converse College. Niles challenged every camper to ask all of the counselors as many questions as they could, and to take that advice and information they received and store it in their memory. Niles stressed with running that having fun should be your first priority, then winning.

The meeting concluded with the campers watching a video of Alan Webb breaking Jim Ryun's record at the Prefontaine Classic to help to inspire the campers to a productive week of running at the camp.

Before lights went out and everyone called it a night at 11, campers hung out around the dorm area either buying goodies at the camp store or just having fun with old friends and teammates as well as new found friends and acquintances at the camp.

So what initially what looked to be an unpleasant day with the inclement weather, turned out to be a quite enjoyable day as campers and camp staff are excited about the fun things in store here and the great experiences that come along with it.