Tuesday October 6 saw Monta Vista make it’s first visit of 2015 to the historic Crystal Springs Cross Country course.
Crystal is such a wonderful course…we are really fortunate to have this as our home course. Many high school cross country runners have four year careers and never run on as great a course as Crystal, and MVXC athletes can run there eight to twelve times over four years! It’s a pretty course, and challenging, a truly honest cross country course that allows athletes to test their fitness. Knowing we are running at Crystal is motivation to train hard.
The goal at the SCVAL Crystal Preview meet is to become familiar with the course, or re-familiarize ourselves. Having a strategy for racing Crystal is important because the course is set up to trap the unwary; the first half mile of the course practically begs you to run fast, and the second half mile quickly punishes the overly ambitious athlete with a steady uphill climb. We want to run hard, but at the same time be under control especially during the first mile. We didn’t want the back end of the race to become a survival test, we wanted to steadily build so that each mile was faster than the last and we finished strong.
While our race strategy was a little conservative, none-the-less we had great individual results. MVXC has a long list of PRs: Isabelle, Jae Youn, Sabrina, Vamsee, Angelo, Bennett, Scott, Edwin, Jason, Forest, Ryan Loke, Andy Ma, Rahul, Dan, Aidan and the biggest PR of the day, Spencer. Plus, we had additions to our ‘all-time’ list.
We have records by class going back for five years (since Coach Flatow and Coach Johnson took over the program), and Andy Fang ran the fourth fastest time and Ryan Nui the sixth fastest time of any freshman boy at Crystal over that time period! Jeffrey Xu, Justin Lin, and Kingsley Wang all recorded marks in the top ten all-time for sophomores; which is even more impressive because these boys are running their first season of cross while the boys knocked off the top ten all had run as freshman and were in their second years of cross country! And Sarah Feng’s 20:29 was fourth on the list of freshman girls, trailing only the outstanding marks of Jenny Xu, Kelly Bishop and Akshara Majjiga!
And we still have at least one more shot for better marks at Crystal, four weeks from now at the SCVAL Championships! Many athletes show a big improvement from the Crystal Preview race to the SCVAL Championships, due to four weeks of training, better course knowledge and the energy of Leagues. For example, last year Anna dropped 36 seconds, Christina Jennings 50, Paru 56, Akshara 59 and Mizuki a whopping 1:50; among the boys, Brent improved 45 seconds from meet to meet, Akshay Thontakudi 46, Derek 72, Atharva 80, Aidan 81. Our challenge over the next four weeks is to try to be as perfect as we can be: Lots of sleep, good hydration, better nutrition, take care of ourselves (stretching, see doctors and trainers for help right away and do what they tell us to do), make all the practices and work hard. We want to do all these things for our running, while also meeting all of our academic requirements. Balancing our academic and athletic goals will take some work and focus, yet we can do it!
Being focused on a cross country goal for a four year high school career year is very, very challenging. However, what we are asking for now is four weeks of focus! For four weeks, let’s find an hour a day more for sleep. Identify stuff we can postpone (tell people you will be back on Facebook on November 4 but for now running is a priority and you want an hour more sleep a night), eliminate (Heroes Reborn is going to be terrible TV anyway, just don’t watch it!), or just do more efficiently. For four weeks, we can get our 10-20 minutes of stretching in each day, even if this seems tedious. For four weeks, we can eliminate some junk food and eat some more vegetables. Yes some of what I am asking for is hard, and some of what I’m asking for is not fun, but it is only for four weeks.
What we need to feel good about ourselves is hard. Activities with instant payoff and results with little effort or sacrifice do not satisfy our psychological need to feel successful and competent. Goals that require effort, focus and sacrifice are more rewarding. There is a direct relationship between the effort of attaining a goal and the satisfaction we feel when we reach the goal. Tying your shoes won’t bring you gratification. The feeling of satisfaction and pride in putting on your race shoes and recording a new PR will bring you lasting gratification. The feeling of gratification is your true reward for stretching beyond the comfortable, the safe and the familiar. Completing a hard task demonstrates competence, and makes us feel good about ourselves overall, not just for our running.
For only four weeks, we can do just about anything! (And who knows, perhaps the things we have to focus on for four weeks will become habits!)
There is no satisfaction without a struggle first. -Marty Liquori.
Complete results are available at Lynbrook, and MVXC analysis is at XCStats.
Don’t forget to order your SCVAL Championship T-Shirt!
