Great Glen 9-9-23

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Kendra crush

What fun! It’s the weekend and you have to be at school over an hour earlier than you do on a school day! The upshot is that every other early morning Saturday bus will seem late in comparison. By the time I (Coach Irving) met the bus at 7:15 up in my hometown of New Hampton, the entire bus was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to race.

Despite the dire predictions of scattered thunderstorms, the weather at Great Glen was great as usual, and only got better (despite a little too hot for my liking) with views of the Presidential range. 

With two races per gender on tap, the JV race was the first off the line, featuring a full scoring team of Eliza, Lydia, Nicole, Emily, and Reagan. Eliza got the early race glory, sprinting off the line to lead the race for at least the first 200 meters. Very few runners can say they led a race today, so that is an accomplishment! Reagan highlighted the end of the race when she ran into view of the finish line and turned on the afterburners. She put 40 seconds on the runners she was with in only a quarter mile! Something tells me that she is only going to get faster each race…

t-shirt winners, with Emerald, Ceili (both of Newfound), Maddy, and Lily

Following the JV boys race, it was the varsity girls turn. And what a race! Each year the base goal of every runner should be to be faster than they were the year before. In this race that goal was CRUSHED. The total improvement among the 6 runners who ran was 13 minutes and 54 seconds. I’ll indicate each runners improvement in parenthesis. Another thing I noticed was the lesson learned from our first home meet - this meet they all started out much more reasonably and without exception improved their placing as the meet went on. 

For the second race in a row Lily led the MV pack from start to finish, eventually finishing in 8th place in 22:59 (-1:13) and earning the first TOP TEN t-shirt in two years. Just behind her in 23:23 (-2:04) and also earning a t-shirt, thanks to her long-range kick, was Junior Captain MADDY! Sydney nearly cracked the top 20 in 22nd place with a 25:05 (-3:02). Despite the anti-Kendra weather, Junior Captain Kendra resumed her more-normal spot of 4th on the team, running a 25:41 (-1:10), keeping Sydney in sight the whole way. Look out though, because Keira continued her speedy ways with an all-time PR of 26:11 (-2:15). And again, not far behind Keira was fellow sophomore (and crazy tree/rock climber) Tessa, running another all-time PR of 26:54 (-4:12!). Those times are all just crazy good.

A yummy and well deserved late lunch at Five Guys concluded the day. Congratulations to all the runners, today was a great day and a testament to your good summer and fall (so far) of training!

For the boys, first up were Jonathan, Cooper, and Westin in the JV race.  All 3 were looking to improve in their second xc meet and first invitational.  They got off to a good start together but Westin pulled away on the rolling hills leading the JV with a time of 21:59.  An improvement of 3:47 from his first meet and the 7th fastest on the team for the day! Jonathan came in at 24:26, improving his time by almost 7 minutes.  Cooper made it a perfect day by finishing in 27:10, an almost 4 minute improvement and crushing his goal for the day of getting under 30.

After watching the great runs from the girls team the boys varsity was ready to keep the PR's coming.  We had three boys that had run Great Glen before: Mychal, Ben Newton, and Nate with Great Glen PR's of 20:00, 20:48, and 21:02 last year respectively.  The boys got off to a fast start and didn't look back.  Mychal came out of the woods first about 50 meters behind a group of 4.  He  unleashed a blazing kick all the way to the finish catching all 4 of them finishing in an all time PR of 18:33 going 40 seconds faster than the first meet this year and 87 seconds faster than his time last year.  Next in for MV was Ben (Jammer) in 19:13.  Improving by 1:43 from the first meet.  He was followed closely by Nate running an all time PR of 19:31 and a minute faster than the home meet.  Tony and Ben Newton came in shortly after Nate and separated by only 10 seconds.  Tony finished in 20:30, improving by 23 seconds.  Ben finished in 20:41 setting a Great Glen PR and taking 44 seconds off his home meet time.  Chris and Sam finished the scoring with two more all time PR's.  Chris took over 2 minutes off his time and Sam shocked himself running a 22:33 taking almost 90 seconds off his time.

As a team the boys were 7th out of 13.  The work they've done is paying off and they're looking forward to putting in some more to see how far they can go.