Capital Area Championships
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WHAT. A. RACE.
You want to stay away from superlatives when making comparisons, but I can’t remember a race where the team exceeded expectations by such a margin. Let’s jump ahead and go through the results. Sam - a season PR by a bunch, and her best time since freshman year. Lily - actually passed Sam at the two mile mark, and ran a PR of about a minute and a half. Madison - PR of a minute and a half. Sydney - a PR of OVER TWO MINUTES. Kendra, a season PR of over a minute, and only about 6 seconds off her overall PR. Jessi, an all-time PR. Emmaleigh, just a few seconds off her PR. Anna - season PR, maybe an overall PR? Nicole - PR of a minute+. Lydia - PR of over a minute and first sub-30 race! Taylor was close to her PR as well. Overall 5th place out of 10 full teams (and 6 other non-full ones), beating teams that beat us earlier in the year and getting a team time average a whopping FIVE MINUTES (and 17 seconds) faster than our first (HOT) home meet on September 3rd. In fact, that average time (which is an average of the 5 fastest times) is the 7th fastest MV time average (of about 30) since the current course was created in 2012, and the fastest since 2019. The seniors sure went out in style!
The weather cooperated yet again, giving us a perfect temperature for racing. The course was fast and dry, even resulting in a course record on the boys side. While I wasn’t able to get out on the course too much due to race director responsibilities, I was able to see the front of the race play out a bit, and saw some great kicks by all the girls. We are putting all those strides to work! Capping off the day was a little recognition of the seniors; super awesome posters for all created by Jessi, nicely gift wrapped succulents from Maddy and Kendra, and the ubiquitous cactus - see if you can make it last until college! Seniors - thanks for all the years you have given the team; you are such a special bunch and are the reason why the team is so wonderful. Please keep in touch with us and come back and visit often!
Post-script - the next day.
“I don’t get it, all you do in cross country is run. Who runs for fun?” We’ve all heard it, probably multiple times a week. And there’s not really an answer. How do you describe cross country to someone who just doesn’t know? How can you describe a run like we had today (sorry to those who missed it)? Today was the perfect XC run; here’s a recap: Pretty Loop - 4.5 miles. In an effort to make it more new, we ran through trails not used in 5 years due to new construction. To avoid trespassing, we ran down an overgrown trail where someone discovered a snake. Emmaleigh, the snake whisperer, picked it up only to discover it apparently “peed” on her, causing her to throw it at Kendra. Shrieks! Then it was off to the river, passing some manual train cars on the way. “Is this river salt or freshwater, Mr. Irving? Fresh? But it flows into the ocean, doesn’t it?” Real quotes. We found a beautiful point of rocks on the riverbank and named it “Awesome Point”, just downstream of “Awesome Island”, because Samantha gave a speech presenting the Awesome Award to Lily. Then it was off to continue the run, delayed briefly by a very scenic bench and climbing tree, where we will return for a photo shoot next week. Off to the trail, where at some point Sydney hit the dirt, and on to visit the cows. Then it was Kendra’s turn to wipe out, this time drawing blood and adding a third scar perhaps? The agony of the fall was soon forgotten as a discarded bike was discovered, at which point a very friendly elderly Asian man appeared out of nowhere, and with very limited English let us know it was a beautiful day and that we were all beautiful too. We gave him the bike. Back to the cows on another part of the fence, where we met a man with a bag of old pears that we attempted to feed to the very uninterested cows. Did we accidentally poison them? Google says no. One more time running up BFG, except for Sam who chose to run up the RBFG and made it somehow. So, just a 4.5 mile run in the woods. I do know we finished with very full hearts.