No one can tell us when the last new cross country course was created in the Central Coast Section. So when the first invitational was announced for the brand new Palo Corona course in Carmel, California, Monta Vista was the first school to sign up. The new Palo Corona course was rumored to be a gem–we wanted to see for ourselves!
After early wake up calls for the 6:30am bus, MVXC headed to Carmel. The morning fog told everyone that this would be a good day for running. After setting up camp, coach and a bunch of athletes walked the course for the first time, trying to figure out the best tactics. For the five kilometer high school distance, athletes would run a two kilometer loop twice then a one K loop before sprinting to a finish. While there were no major hills, and the trails were well maintained, Palo Corona looked like it could be a tricky course.
The first race of the first invitational on Palo Corona was the varsity boys. Junior Denny Dong went out hard and sophomore Tanay Parikh stayed in contact the entire 5km as the two came in within 16 seconds of each other in fourth and eighth place…after two runners, Monta Vista was in a tie with the CCS ranked Los Gatos for first place. Ari Rajaram and first year runner Gene Zhou came in within 12 seconds of each other and junior William Wu finished the scoring as Monta Vista ended up 6th as a team out of 17 schools in the first invitational race ever at Palo Corona!
The Monta Vista varsity girls matched the boys’ sixth place finish as they put on a show of their own on this brand spanking new cross country course. Senior Nikhita Saldi was the first Monta Vista girl to ever cross the finish line at Palo Corona as she put up a 21:06 mark on the 5km course; sophomore Anika Bhandarkar was the next MVXC runner as she cracked the 22 minute barrier for the 5km first time with a 21:52 clocking! Seniors Avani Kalari, Sydney Stevens and Nerea Northrop finished the scoring for Monta Vista, and juniors Valerie Ayzenberg and Megan Nieh came in within seconds of each other in 57th and 59th out of 117 varsity finishers (there were 288 girls who finished over the course of the day). Nikhita, Denny and Tanay all had individual varsity medals around their necks on the way home.
In the junior varsity races, Parmarth Joshi and Madi Polidoro were the individual leaders for the boys and for the girls. Madi’s 23:58 earned her a ninth place finish and an individual medal for placing in the top 15 for her race! Madi’s 7:44 pace for 5km is the fastest pace she has ran for any cross country race at any distance. Navya Parvathaneni’s fierce finishing kick got rave reviews from everyone who saw it, as Navya also her fastest race pace in her cross country career. In the sophomore races, Ruhaan Shah, Katie Lee and Manasi Prasad all finished in the top 15 to earn individual medals–although Katie and Manasi gave up their individual medals in favor of the team medals that the sophomore girls earned by finishing in second place as a team! Sophomores Katie, Manasi, Hemani Kamarshi, Lilia Murase, Vera Bondar, Siran Gao and Juliana Banes all brought home team medals to go with a pretty solid team trophy. The freshman boys closed out the day with a 9th place team finish, including Ravi Polisetti’s fifth place finish and MVXC’s last medal of the day (Soham Beesetti just missed another medal with his 17th place).
Along with Anika, sophomore Ruhaan Shah had a 5km personal record (so did many first year runners).
The Palo Corona cross country course and the Pacific Grove Invitational, both in their first year, got good reviews. The course is deceptively challenging. While there are not a lot of big hills, there are a lot of little elevation changes and the course is twisty. The combination is a challenge–there are not a lot of opportunities for runners to turn off their brains and just hammer. Runners need to be constantly thinking and adjusting and analyzing. Coach noticed an example of this at the start of the final kilometer…there from one angle as the trail turned to the left, there was a little downhill that looked like a nice place to start a pick up and pass some athletes. But as coach moved around to watch one of the races from another angle, he saw a little upswing in the trail that runners hit like a speed bump and slowed right down again. A runner looking to make a little move from 4km to 4.5km–which looks like a good spot to move on Palo Corona–needs to adjust again after that little bump, and not many runners seemed to make that adjustment. Tactics on this course are going to matter and it will be interesting to see athletes build their ‘books’ on Palo Corona.
Complete results are posted on XCStats. Agnes Wang has posted photos, too.
MVXC figured that this was a good opportunity to hit the beach after a race, and headed to Asimolar state park for a little beach time and lunch before heading home. Karena Lai and Avani Kalari and a few others thought, why not have an ice bath too–coach gave that cold ocean water a hard pass! Thanks to the parents (Hemani, Gene and Tanay’s parents) for organizing our beach outing–we could not have enjoyed the beach without their help!
Odds and Ends for Week Nine of MVXC
- MVXC awarded grit recognition for some post-practice training on Thursday. Captain Anika Bhandarkar volunteered to lead some shin splint prehab and there was a big group that stayed after practice to participate. These athletes stayed late after practice to do some uncomfortable and tedious work that will help them run more during the rest of this season…so grit recognition was awarded to Ethan, Rishi, Nick, Raj, Ian, Lilia, Juliana, Vera and Hemani (yes that’s almost a quarter of our team that stayed to be tortured!).
- After high school, it’s easy to lose touch with people–but MVXC athletes seem to have friendships that endure. Here are two MVXC teammates, Kiersten Chuc and Bridget Gottlieb, class of 2014 who met up for a weekend in Washington, DC almost a decade after they graduated!
- Sylvana Northrop (MVXC 2021) and her UCSD Tritons will be competing in the Bay Area at the Santa Clara Bronco Invitational on October 15.
- Rohun Agrawal (MVXC 2021) finished 37th with a 26:27 time for Caltech at the Pomona-Pitzer XC Invitational on October 8; that’s a 5:19 pace for 8km!
- Triya Roy (MVXC 2020) will be back on the trails for her Johns Hopkins Bluejay team on October 15.
