Recap:

It was a tale of two courses at Harrison Lake State Park.  The forecast called for a possibility of rain showers in the morning, and that’s exactly what we got as we endured at least a good inch plus of steady rain.  We were thrown a curve ball right from the start as they changed the course from previous years, essentially running it in reverse.  This turned out to be great for the middle school…not so much for the high school.  The first mile of this course is very fast; but where the middle school ends with a pretty decent second mile, the second mile of the high school course is a brutal battle uphill for what seems like the entire mile.  So whereas the middle school athletes were turning in PR’s left and right, the high school athletes were running split differences of +1:00 to +1:30 from the first to second mile.  To add to the difficulties, we had five high school athletes out with injuries or illness.

That said, it was still a solid effort by our varsity runners, both during an excellent first mile and some excellent finishing surges.

Here are the results for the High School:

From what I heard, the Middle School races were fun to run (even if they weren’t quite as fun to watch) thanks to the rain.  We ran very competitively, finishing sixth as a team in both races. Both teams ran well, and eight out of the eleven runners set a new lifetime PR, including Savannah breaking her own Middle School girls record. Here’s how big the day was for those eight runners:

Full Event Results are available on Baumspage.

As we look towards the next meet at Widewater Park, we’re hoping to see our missing runners return to health. We have some great workouts planned for this week, so hopefully we’ll get past the injuries and illness and press on for a great Homecoming weekend!

Fayette Eagle Invitational – Sat. 9/19
Harrison Lake State Park
26246 Harrison Lake Road
Fayette, OH 43521

7:45am – Bus leaves High School (est. arrival 8:15am)
9:00am – Girls’ middle school race
9:30am – Boys’ middle school race
10:00am – Girls’ high school race
10:45am – Boys’ high school race
12:30pm – Bus returns to High School (est. departure 11:45am)

Notes – One of the most beautiful courses we run with a few moderate hills and lots of wooded trails. Right now there’s a prediction of rain, and this has historically been a chilly meet, so dress and plan accordingly.

Give yourself extra time to find a parking spot and walk to the start/finish area:

*There will be concessions available. However, we ask that athletes have a healthy breakfast that morning and NOT eat concession food until after they have competed.  We will have snacks provided.

Recap:

Historically our first meet of the season, the Archbold Invitational served this year as our second race and gave us an opportunity to be more focused on specific running strategies.  Despite being a mostly flat and open course that one would expect to generate fast times, this course once again was slow for runners across the board, not just for Evergreen.

That said, every returning runner improved on their times from last year significantly. Grace and Leah each dropped about 1.5 minutes off their Archbold time from last year, Phoenix and Brendan both dropped almost two whole minutes, and Lilly dropped well over two minutes (almost 2:20)!  Alexis and Hannah also set lifetime PR’s in this race. That is an impressive testament to how much work these athletes are putting in.

Here are the results for the High School:

For the Middle School team, this was actually our third meet. A volleyball tournament left us with only two runners for the girls’ race, but both Kennedy and Maddy made the most of it by setting season and lifetime PR’s (very significant given that their previous best times were on a pretty fast course at Lake High School).  The boys put up a strong showing, finishing tenth overall as a team. Ben and Shane shaved a minute and a half off of last year’s time, with both finishing in the top twenty. Evan, Chandler and Chris all gave strong efforts as well to edge us ahead of Swanton!

Here are the results for the Middle School:

While the race was not as fast as we had expected, this was a good step in our progression this year.  The next several weeks will give us some great courses to run as we continue to build momentum towards the NWOAL League Championship in mid-October. Next up is the Fayette Invitational at Harrison Lake!

Full Event Results are available on Baumspage.

(Thanks to Theresa Bryson for most of the photos!)

Recap: This was a very challenging course and a big test for our first full meet. Not only were there a couple significant hills on the trails, but the runners also had to endure a long climb up a major hill right before turning the corner to sprint in the last 150 meters.  Despite having little hill training at this point in the season, our runners handled the course pretty well.

Here are the results for the High School:

Here are the results for the Middle School:

For those of you keeping score, that’s two middle school girls meets and three records taken down. Congratulations to Savannah on a new Girls 8th grade and Middle School record! Congrats also to Millie who also beat the previous record of 15:16 and set a new 7th grade girls record!

Full Event Results are available on Baumspage.

Great job again this week by all our athletes. We’ll go over splits and review our goals at Monday’s team meeting.

The 2015 Cross Country season kicked off with the middle school runners heading to Lake High School for the Lake Flyers Junior High Cross Country Invitational.  This was a rare event in that 7th and 8th graders ran in separate races, so we were not able to field a full team.  Nevertheless, Evergreen definitely made an impression!

Here are the results:

Kennedy set a new 7th Grade Girls record with her time of 15:43, and Ben set a new 8th Grade Boys and overall Middle School record with his time of 12:09.  All seven of our runners performed VERY well, especially those running in their first meet ever!