Back to race at De La Salle!

The Monta Vista Cross Country team returned to the De La Salle/Nike Invitational on Saturday, September 19…after an eight year absence.  As we continue to navigate the first year after the strange 2020 season, it’s great to be part ‘real’ cross country meets again.  Truly, there is nothing like a big high school cross country starting line to make your coach’s heart sing a bit louder on a crisp Saturday morning!

De La Salle offers a new format from the last time MVXC made the trip to Concord.  There are boys and girls JV races at the 3 mile distance used by the varsity runners, while there are 2 mile race options for frosh-soph and JV runners also.  This gives more athletes a chance to run the ‘big’ distance in a big race.  MVXC loaded up on the longer distances when possible.

The JV girls made everyone sit up and take notice in the first race of the day.  Sophomore Ryland Adzich went out strong and finished stronger, taking sixth place with a 21:51 to give Monta Vista a low stick early.  Nerea Northrop was only 22 seconds back in 11th place and Avani Kalari gave MVXC a third podium finisher in 17th place.  Freshman Anika Bhandakar just missed the podium and came in with a pod of three MV runners.  Anika, Sophia Chen and Jasmine Varma went 21-22-23 to clinch the girls’ first place team finish–a narrow 62-71 victory over Amador Valley High School.  Anika’s pace was a full 50 seconds per mile faster than at her race at Lagoon Valley two weeks before, while Jasmine knocked 38 seconds per mile off her race pace at LV.  Good work, ladies!

The JV boys were paced by Sahil Goel who ran a 19:58 for the three mile race, good for 69th place, while Nitin Kukreja, Ethan Lam and Neal Jain ran in a 13 second pack from 20:56-21:09.   Ethan’s mark was 30 seconds per mile faster than at his race at Lagoon Valley, a nice jump in only two weeks.

The varsity teams followed, with the girls leading off.  Nikhita Saldi lit up the varsity girls’ race with a blazing 18:11/6:04 per mile race, good for third place overall, a new Monta Vista course record for the Newhall Park three miler.  Nikhita broke Bridget Gottlieb’s record set in 2013, before Bridge graduated and headed t Johns Hopkins University and an NCAA championship team–just saying!  Jannah Sheriff was the next MVXC athlete in, breaking 20 minutes with a 19:47, and Vivian Lau and Ellie Hsu hustled across the line ten seconds apart from each other.  Sydney Stevens closed out the scoring for MVXC as the girls took 12th place overall in a strong field.

The boys were lead by Justin Yu, who had Monta Vista’s fastest time of the day with a 16:50/5:37 pace run.  Alex Nguyen, Andrew Cole and Ari Rajaram ran in a 16 second pack from 18:16 to 18:32, with captain Soti Kougiouris finishing the scoring as the boys took 28th.  Justin, Alex, and Andrew have all increased their pace about 18 seconds per mile since Watermelon, while Ari and Soti have gotten a full half minute a mile faster; this continual improvement as a team can pay dividends as the season goes on.

After the three mile races were over, the format switched to two mile courses, with a middle loop of park eliminated.   The frosh-soph girls top five of Sandhya Fasnacht, Manasi Prasad, Raje Kenyan, Siran Gao and Vera Bondar wrapped up a 12th place finish, and the frosh-soph boys top five of Denny Dong, Tanay Parikh, Brandon Xu, Ruhaan Shah and Jayden Peng matched the girls with a 12th place team finish.  Denny’s 11:35 earned him an eighth place overall finish and a spot on the podium, and was the third best all-time for a MVXC boy in the two mile race.   Insiah Kizilbash, Joey Suresh, and Aditi Dantuluri wrapped up the day for MVXC with the JV girls two mile race; Insiah and Aditi both were about a minute per mile faster than their race paces at Lagoon Valley, while Joey took a minute and a half off her pace from Watermelon!

Complete race results have been posted on XCStats and Lynbrook (slightly different formats).  Agnes Wang took some very nice photos, too!

Well done, team!  We have a quick turnaround with the first SCVAL meet at Baylands on September 21.

A big thank you to Sydney’s parents for hosting our pre-race pasta party!

SOME ANALYSIS

Coach was playing around with some data from our first few races.  The table below shows the per-mile pace for all the athletes who ran at DLS on Saturday, along with their paces at Watermelon and Lagoon Valley; and the changes from race to race are also calculated.  Yes, there are differences in courses and distances, but there are some interesting takeaways.  

First, almost everyone got faster from Lagoon Valley to DLS, even though many of the runners jumped up in distance by a full mile…and the runners who did not get faster from Lagoon Valley did get faster from Watermelon.  Therefore, EVERYONE should have something positive to take away from Saturday’s race!  There are some startling changes in pace, with several runners dropping a full minute, lead by Manasi’s 70 second per mile increase in pace.  When pace drops that fast in two weeks, that generally indicates that athletes are really learning what it feels like to race…athletes are learning what it feels like to run fast, athletes are learning what they are capable of accomplishing, and they are learning to get ‘comfortable with being uncomfortable’.  

Often as runners we focus on where we place in a race, and certainly that is important, but the finish order in a race is not the only way to measure your results.  As a personal example, a few years ago your coach flat-out won his ‘home’ town 5km race on a beach in Oregon…just a few months after finishing 16,496th in the Boston Marathon.  While I enjoyed that win, I guarantee you I am much more proud of that 16,496th!  
Finishing the Boston Marathon in the rain that year was much more of an achievement.  

There are many ways for runners to look at the progress being made beyond placement at a race–and not only within a season, by the way.  Runners think of progress over years, not just month to month or week to week (and never day to day!  That will make you nuts 🙂 ).  Look back at your Watermelon Run time year to year (Ari ran 21:18 as a freshman, 17:23 as a junior).  XCStats let’s you look at your average race pace over a season (Nikhita averaged 7:13 as a freshman and is averaging 6:21 so far this season).  Keep your own records of tests that matter to you.  Yes, courses are different, yes weather is different, yes there are all sorts of things you can argue…but still, you can track this data and the data has meaning.  Please track and look at other objective signs of your progress, such as improvements in your race pace or tempo pace or conversational pace, not just the finish order in races.

Personal progress matters so much, in running and in life.  Amazing things are possible.  When Coach Flatow and Coach Johnson started coaching together, there was a girl on the team who ran 10:13 per mile and 9:24 per mile in her first two races.  In her junior year, she was on the varsity team and was running 7:08 per mile at the CCS championships on Crystal Springs and was part of a top-ten CCS team!  We are not saying the exact thing will happen to you if you run 40 miles a week for the next two years*, but the point is that dramatic changes are possible if you care and if you are willing to work consistently, diligently and hard for a period of time.  Importantly, this is true in most of the things that matter in life, not only running–your school work, your relationships, your profession, your hobbies.

If MVXC keeps working away, our results will continue to improve and impress!

*Your results may vary.  Some settling of contents may occur during shipping. 🙂