September 10, 2020
You ran well in your first cross country meet in this new normal world.
Isak played cat and mouse with the top runner from SPA. In the end, the cat won. And the cat was running in hiking shoes. Really. Isak promises me he will wear his spikes next time. Or at least running shoes.
Ben stuck with the Minnehaha runners right to the end. He was not able to catch that group, but he did run a personal best time on a course that is significantly more challenging than the section course where he set his previous person best.
Evan was next up, also running without spikes, but at least wearing real running shoes. Liam, running just a few seconds off his personal best time, was our next runner. Peter wrapped up our scoring five, running well off his personal best. But we can cut him some slack, since he only got the boot off his previously broken ankle about a month ago!
Trevor ran well and was smiling the entire race. This was not only his first race as a varsity runner, but his first cross country race. An impressive debut! Noah, promoted to the varsity finished things up for us. In this much smaller than normal field, he was left running alone, which is always much harder.
Next, our junior varsity runners headed bravely to Battle Creek. After learning the course on the fly, it was race time. Eddie led the way, not going out too fast and running a smart, patient race. Joey ran a personal best, moving up throughout the race to finish just ahead of our new runner from Gentry, Andrew, making a strong debut in his first cross country meet. Zain finished just a few seconds further back, running his personal best. Henry S. overcame a side cramp and added his own personal best time, and Eilam, though he wasn’t feeling his best, persevered and finished, wrapping things up for our junior varsity boys. Thank you to the JV boys for diligently helping to pick up the cones after the race.
You did very well adapting to the new normal, wearing masks, distancing on the starting line, sticking to a tight schedule so our junior varsity runners could get to the second meet on time, and everything else. While some of your times may have been disappointing, those will improve as we do more work in the coming weeks.
If you do not have spikes, visit Run N Fun and pick up a pair. If you did not wear your spikes, bring them to our next interval workout and put a little time in wearing them to get acclimated. They will make a huge difference.
Times for our runners can be found here.
