MVXC raced at Baylands and traveled to Los Angeles for the Mt. SAC Invitational…let’s quickly review what happened!
Baylands
The Baylands race was a mix of athletes trying for 5km PRs and getting race-ready for leagues, and other athletes getting in a hard tempo run before Mt. SAC on Saturday. Our results were very solid, with our team results placing in the middle of our league. These are in line with our goals coming in to the day. Rohun, Sid, Trent, Tyler, Pranav, Will, Justin, Allen, Timothy, Nitin, Rohun, Sri, Matthew Lau, Anoushka, Rachel, Vivian C, Emily, Serena Y, Sylvana, and Ria all had course PRs, 5km PRs, or often both. Ria and Matt both had course PRs of over two minutes!–improvements like that don’t just ‘happen’ in running, improvements come from effort and miles. Sylvana had one of the top individual performance on the day with a 19:28, good for fourth individually and Monta Vista’s second best all-time at Baylands (behind only Jenny Xu’s 2012 mark). Anoushka took a strong 15th in the JV girls race with a solid 22:04, while Justin Yu could not slow down and bolted to a 17:24 and a fourth place in the FSB race and the second fastest time any Monta Vista freshman has recorded at Baylands (behind only Andy Fang in 2015 and in front of Brent Mogensen’s freshman time in 2012). That is a great mark for Justin, and sets him up for some good races to come.
All in all, a very solid day. Malcolm Slaney (a Palo Alto dad and photographer) posted some nice photos. Well done, team!
Mt SAC Invitational
About half of the team got on the bus pre-dawn on Friday and heading to Los Angeles for the Mt SAC Invitational, the largest cross country event in the world. Mt. SAC is a little smaller than the past as the meet directors have to work around a LOT of construction for their new track (the planned site for the 2020 United States Olympic Trials). Nonetheless Mt SAC was, as always, an incredible event.
Monta Vista kicked off the day with one of the most unusual races that we have every been a part of at Mt. SAC. The Monta Vista varsity girls applied to compete in the Sweepstakes races–the most elite and select races of the day, including the top 15 or so teams attending Mt. SAC. The varsity team was accepted, which allowed us to also apply for the JV Sweepstakes races. This year, few teams seemed to have the confidence in the strength of their teams 14 runners deep because there were only five teams that were accepted into this race–Great Oak, Mira Costa, Arcadia, Homestead and Monta Vista. If you don’t follow high school cross country closely, let me put you in the know–these teams are California XC royalty. All of these teams have storied records of State appearances and State championships, and Monta Vista belongs. With only 29 runners in the race, the race became a very personal duel, which can be mentally tough–it is often mentally easier to run in a pack, it is tough to keep grinding in a tough race when you are in a gap. It is easier to pass people in bunches than to look at one person 20 meters ahead and decide to speed up and make up that distance. Yet our runners competed and picked off just enough runners to end up on the podium along with Great Oak and Mira Costa, outlasting Arcadia by seven points for third place. We are really proud of this third place plaque!
The Varsity girls had a more standard Mt. SAC race–15 teams and 109 very fast athletes. Jannah Sheriff (running though a hard fall at the start), Triya Roy and Sarah Feng all went under 20 minutes on the tough Mt SAC course, and the team ended up in 8th place. The Varsity boys were lead by captains Kyle Tsujimoto and Nitin Subramanian’s 17 minute clockings to a 19th place finish in their race. The freshman boys ran an incredibly strong race in their first time on the hilly course, finishing in fourth place and only six points off the podium; Justin Yu, Matthew Sun and Sahil Goel all earned individual medals while finishing in the top 15 out of 164 finishers. Rohun Agrawal took third place in the sophomore boys’ race with a 16:58 mark, the fourth best all-time for a Monta Vista sophomore on the Mt. SAC course. And finally, Upasana Dilip claimed our final medal in the sophomore girls’ race, finishing in 14th place, with Vivian Cheng only 4o seconds behind in 22nd.
Sarah, Anjali, Lauren, Triya, Sanjana, Kyle, Nitin and Karthik all had personal records, with Sanjana having the largest PR of the day with a 1:37 improvement. Complete results are on XCStats.
There are a few great things about Mt. SAC we can take with is. It is a good experience to be part of an event this big, and remember one of the special things about cross country–every cross country athlete has the chance to get on the course compete with the best in the country. Cross country is not like most ball sports, where most teams will never be on the field with the very best teams in the country and can only wonder what that would be like. Monta Vista can go down to Mt. SAC and be on the same course as the best teams in the country, in some cases in the same race, and compete. I think this is one of the things that makes cross country special. For MVXC in particular, running on the tough Mt. SAC course is good physical preparation for our upcoming championship races at Crystal Springs. And the Mt. SAC races are good mental preparation also; we are traveling to big races and having to perform our best under stress, which is good preparation for getting on the starting line for a championship race. We can get on the line knowing that we have dealt with nervousness and uncertainty before, and we can deal with these emotions again!
Well done team, we are so proud of you! You truly worked hard to achieve these results.
Upcoming
Next up is Lynbrook on Thursday, October 25 followed by SCVALs at Crystal on October 30. This team is SO READY for a great finish to a fine 2018 season–we are very proud of all the work this team has investing into their year! Let’s all keep our focus on a strong finish to a wonderful season!
“Some men, like bad runners in the stadium, abandon their purposes when close to the goal; while it is at that particular point, more than at any other, that others secure the victory over their rivals.”
–Polybius Histories ~170BC
