“It’s important to know that at the end of the day it’s not the medals you remember. What you remember is the process — what you learn about yourself by challenging yourself, the experiences you share with other people, the honesty the training demands — those are things nobody can take away from you whether you finish twelfth or you’re an Olympic Champion.”
-Silken Laumann, Canadian Olympian
There is not much to compare to the California State Cross Country Meet…the State meet is our Olympics! And since the Olympics does not have cross country (so dumb), maybe the State meet is actually better than the Olympics!
This is the second year in the row that Monta Vista sent both the girls’ team and an individual boy qualifier, and the third year in a row our girls team qualified. This is an exceptional achievement, a real demonstration of sustained effort and focus. The team definitely does not take this achievement for granted–we were keyed up and ready to go!
Brent went first and recorded a 57 second course PR, running the three mile Woodward Park course in 16:28 (5:19 per mile). This mark makes Brent the fifth fastest Monta Vista boy ever at Woodward Park! Running as an individual is always hard–your team always helps you push harder, and knowing your team is working too helps tell that voice inside your head, ‘back off-I’m not slowing down!’
An hour later, the girls team went out and ran outstanding races. The D1 State race always goes out of the start frantically, but our girls know how to run disciplined paces. A mile in the race, when many athletes are starting to leak oil and regretting their over-eager starts, our girls get to work…Akshara passed more than 40 runners in the last couple of miles, and we think the rest of the team had similar results! Kelly was our first runner in, followed by Sarah and Anna; all three of these young women are among Monta Vista’s top ten all-time at Woodward Park. Personal records were recorded by Namrata (16 seconds) and Anna (an impressive 49 seconds!). The girls finished 15th among California D1 teams, and recorded a team time of 98:37, an average of 19:43 per scoring runner–oddly, this is the same time to the second as we scored last year! If Claire had not caught a cold at the wrong time, the girls would have busted that mark. After losing both Jenny Xu and Julia Chang to MIT and Johns Hopkins, equaling last year’s time is an impressive accomplishment!
We are losing Brent, Maddy, Anna, and Namrata to graduation–all wonderful competitors and teammates. The team looks to be in good hands with Kelly (a three time State meet competitor), and with Akshara, Sarah and Claire getting valuable experience in State competition. I think they plan on doing their best to get back again! And the boys are oh so close…one spot from State this year! The boys are really doing everything they can to start their own run, and they are close to making that happen.
Keep on eye on mvrunning for more analysis.
A special thanks to Bridget Gottlieb (MVXC14), Julia Chang (15), Andy Ma and Aidan Gottlieb who came along for support!
Results: XCStats has MV information, the State site has complete results, and Hank has done some fun analysis including CCS only.
KEEP CHECKING MVRUNNING.COM FOR NEWS AND UPDATES!
