Monta Vista travelled to nearby Homestead on March 6, 2021, and made it’s strongest showing in this pandemic-shortened year!
The boys were lead again by Rohun Agrawal, who went out fast and never looked back while recording the best mark of the day from anyone on any team running the 2.2 mile Homestead course; Rohun’s 10:45 mark was the only time that averaged under 5 minutes per mile on the day, and was 19 seconds under the next best time. Matthew Sun, Alex Nguyen, Andrew Cole and freshman Denny Dong made up a fairly dense chase pack with only 40 seconds between them; not far after Denny, Pranav Reddy, Sahil Goel and Max Ready had another pack with only a four second spread. Matthew’s finish was 3oth out of a total of 250 SCVAL runners! Overall, the boys’ varsity team scored 179 points to finish in 6th place for the day, the boys’ best finish so far this season.
The girls team had similarly fine results. UCSD-bound senior Sylvana Northrop paced the team, with a 13:07 mark that the fourth best time for any SCVAL girl (for that matter, only 80 boys were faster!). Only 45 seconds separated MVXC’s second finisher, sophomore Nikhita Saldi (who was 21st overall), and Ellie Hsu, freshman Margaux Francoeur, Jannah Sheriff, Sydney Stevens and Vivian Lau. The girls’ team total of 106 points was good for fourth place on the day, like the boys’, their best finish of the season to date! The JV girls, meanwhile, took second place, a mere 7 points shy of leader Palo Alto.
Because the Los Altos, Los Gatos and Homestead courses were contested for the first time this season, it’s hard to make comparisons–there are no PRs or course records established to measure ourselves against. Also the course to course comparisons are tough; while all the courses are relatively flat, they are not exactly flat, and the courses have varied surfaces and turns. So, your coach took an (imperfect) sample of 80 runners who ran all three courses and ran a quick regression…it looks to me like Los Gatos was the fastest of the three courses, with athletes running about 14 seconds per mile faster than on the Los Altos course and about 4-5 seconds faster than the Homestead course (this is a very noisy extrapolation, and there is no control for weather or fitness or a few other variables I can think of, but let’s roll with this OK?).
Using this piece of admittedly sketchy data, eight athletes improved their mile pace greater than expected from Los Gatos to Homestead: Sophia Chen, Amogh Rajagopal, Upasana Dilip (fighting back from an injury!), Ellie, Max, Jannah, Matthew and Vivian Lau (who’s pace under expected was a whopping 30 seconds per mile! (What was your secret, Viv? More sleep 🙂 ? Hydration? Radioactive spider bite?) A larger group improved their pace from Los Altos to Homestead–Vivian, Max, Ellie, Margaux, Denny, Syl, Valerie Alzenburg, Alex, Sydney, Sahil, Sotirios, Agnes, Nikhita. There a lot that a statistician more competent than your coach could do that would poke holes in this analysis, but let’s go with this takeaway–you are improving, athletes! Let’s take that and run with it. Keep working, you will keep improving!
Results can be found on Lynbrook Sports and XCStats. Photos are posted on Malcolm Slaney’s site.
Please don’t forget to sign up THIS WEEK for the cooking class that will open the MVXC season banquet–if you are not sure if you are signed up or not, check this list of all the athletes who have registered.
MVXC has a week off from racing; the next race will be at Gunn on Saturday, March 20. Please note that there will be a practice on Saturday, March 13 at 8am. There is no school on Monday, March 15, so we will have a morning practice on Monday also.
