Central & Oregon

I am a week behind in my posts–sorry!  Let’s catch up…

Central Park

Runners can take the Central Park race for granted–it is a short and flat urbanish layout–but this is still a good opportunity to get some race experience and mental callousing early in the season.  Also, Central is a well-run event thanks to long-time Santa Clara coach Julie L’Heureux, who is all over the details of race management.

The freshman boys lead off the day with a strong third place finish, as Rohun Agrawal and Andrew Richardson lead the way with a 1-2 individual finish.  As we continue to build depth, this class can be formidable for MVXC for years.  The freshman boys started us off on a bit of a trend, as both our varsity teams also took third place in their races (out of 14 Santa Clara Valley Athletic League teams).  The varsity girls recorded an interesting result as winning Paly got two girls in before our first, then MVXC got all seven of our girls in before Paly’s number five…this was not quite enough to reel in the victorious Vikings however the MV depth may be telling later in the season, particularly if our ladies all move up together.  The varsity boys were less than 20 points from first, despite the loss of junior Andy Fang; if he can stay fit while his elbow heels, there could be a surprise waiting for rival SCVAL teams at the end of the season.

Jeff Flewelling lead the soph boys with a fourth place finish and personal record (PR), while the Varsity2 boys got a bit of payback by winning their division by two points over second place Paly.  Ryan Nui and Jason Tsujimoto were both in the top ten individual finishers.  The JV and Varsity2 girls both finished in the top half of the league in their races.

In all, MVXC runners recorded 32 personal records at Central Park, lead by Alicia Chen’s 3:09 and William Zhang’s 2:04 improvements.

MVXC17 Personal Records Recorded at Central Park

Girls

Boys

Complete results are available at XCStats.

3 Course Challenge (Warrenton, Oregon)

For the second straight year, MVXC took twenty athletes to compete in one of the most unique cross-country challenges anywhere, the 3 Course Challenge.  The 3CC is a brainchild and the labor of love from long-time and recently retired Coach Neil Branson of the Seaside High School Seagulls, and is a celebration of the sport of cross country.  With three courses of various degrees of difficulty ranging from water crossings and sand hills to elk trails, the 3CC is a physical and mental challenge.  Also, since seven runners score at the 3CC, the competition is a test of the depth and mental strength of a team–everyone matters on this race day.

The MVXC squad returned with pride, earning the girls large school meet championship while the boys’ scored a runners’ up award.  MVXC came back with these two plaques plus 25 individual and team medals, an impressive hardware haul while competing against some of the best teams in Oregon and Washington as well as teams from Canada.  Only one girl returned to run the same course for the second year in a row, and she made it count–Lauren Ling had a one minute, seven second PR on the Blue course!

Results are also up on XCStats.

Alumni Update

At the prestigious Paul Short Invitational in Lehigh, Monta Vista Alumni Bridget Gottlieb (MV14), Julia Chang (MV15), and Paru Meyyappan (MV17) all competed.  Bridget and Julia are running for Johns Hopkins University (the Hopkins girls’ team is currently ranked first in the country) while Paru is in her first year running for the Carnegie-Mellon University Tartans.  CMU took 6th at Paul Short, while the Hopkins Blue Jays stepped up to the D1 race and took down several first division and Ivy league teams.

Last Week

In addition to a nice day of racing at Central Park, MVXC had a couple of memorable workouts this past week.

On Thursday, the team made our first journey up Horse.  Anna Hsiao (MV16) always said that this was one of her favorite days of the season–because the climb is hard and relentless and the day we first run Horse it is usually hot, and she got a kick out of seeing the first year runners get fooled again and again by the false summits!  While Anna revealed a previously hidden evil streak when she told this story to coach, the climb up Horse is a memorable milestone.  We were particularly gratified with the number of people who said ‘that was hard, but I feel like I really accomplished something’ afterwards.

Saturday we banged out one of the best threshold workouts of the year.  Seven weeks after we ran our first Matador Ks on a Saturday morning in August, we have worked up to Dirty 800s…and we had several athletes recording times that are 30 seconds or more per mile faster than that first workout!  That’s amazing progress and is built on athletic dedication; this was a lot of consistent work.  Check in with Triya, Kyle, Jason, Aravind, Jeffrey, Anjali and others and ask them about their progress so far this season.  (Tracking workout results is very helpful and can be very motivational!)

This Week

MVXC has two races coming up this week, Crystal Preview (SCVAL 2) on Tuesday and the Artichoke Invitational on Saturday.  The Preview is our first look at the historic Crystal Springs course, where our league championships will be held in four weeks.  The Artichoke is a fun romp of a race on the coast, followed by a beach party.  MVXC has done well at Artichoke the past few years–and this is also the race where in 1976, Coach Flatow picked up a top-10 medal himself!  Crystal Preview and Artichoke Invite meet sheets have been posted.