Who will be in the upper left this season?
Watermelon Run day is coming!
This week, MVXC gets out and runs our traditional Watermelon Run. The Watermelon Run feels like the official start of the season–we get out and run hard and have marks that can be compared back for many, many years.
The Stevens Canyon course that we use for our Watermelon Run is much more challenging than most high school teams use for time trials. The course is 4200m/2.6 mile course is longer than some cross country invitationals and has two solid hills; this course is no joke!
The all-time boys course record was set in 2010 by Kevin Bishop in his junior year, with a 14:40 time. In the last few years, Rohan Choudhury came the closest to breaking that mark with a 14:43 in 2015. On the girls’ side, the record was set in 2007 with a 16:38 recorded by the legendary Jean Feng. In 2015, Jenny Xu came the closest with a 17:08 mark.
The start of the 2013 Watermelon Run.
Team-wise, the 2014 girls hold the record with a 90:25 for the first five runners (18:05 per runner average); that team went all the way to the state meet. The boys’ team record is a deadlock at exactly 78:18 (15:41 per runner) achieved by both the 2010 and 2016 squads. That record might be going down this year! It’s also going to be interesting this year to see how our team depth stacks up against prior years. In 2013 and 2015, the second five Monta Vista girls had faster combined times than the first five Varsity girls in 2011! Both the boys’ and the girls’ teams are showing remarkable effort from number 1 through number 102; I could see the second and third five records going down hard.
Jenny Xu (currently a student-athlete at MIT) finishing the 2012 Watermelon Run
While the Watermelon Run is a big event, it still is only a milepost. Our marks only tell us the point we are at on our journey, not as where we will end up. Hopefully we will all take positive messages from the day–either we will feel good about where we are and keep up the effort, or be encouraged to gather some more focus on our goals and our team. No matter what, we are on this journey together!
Watermelon Week! Let’s go get it!
The Stevens Canyon course.
MVXC14 showing why we call it the Watermelon Run!
