And That's a Wrap!

The high school season is now over! Woo hoo! I love coaching the kids, but I will certainly enjoy the extra free time I will have now that the season is done. No high school practices or races to attend until March/April 2011. 

To finish off the season, our girls team and top 2 guys headed down to Victoria yet again for the BC High School Cross Country Championships. It was a cool day with very light rain at times. There were about 280 kids in each race so the course became awfully muddy by the end of the guys race. 

First up was the girls race. 

 

Girls on the start

 

 

 

Mass start

 

We had 7 girls in this event. Top 5 would score for the team with the last 2 basically as alternates in case something went wrong. The race favorite Tanya Humenuik was in the lead after one lap without anyone really challenging her. This is not surprising as she is running VERY strong at the moment and easily won the race. Not bad considering she is in Grade 10. Last year she claimed the silver medal. The second girl was also mostly on her own and then a pack of girls fighting for the bronze. This is were our top girl was for most of the race. I didn't catch the end of the race, but she was in the fight for bronze right up to the line only to get ever so slightly out kicked. She finished fourth 16:27:59 to 16:27:95. Naturally she was slightly disappointed; however, she is only in grade 9, so still has 3 more years to run the race!

The boys race was pretty much just as big. The St.George boys went out front and after the first lap our top guy Forrest was just inside the top 20. His goal was top 20 as they get ribbons and since Forrest is in Grade 12, he wanted to get a ribbon. Second lap he came around in about 11th place. He looked good and I was excited for him, hoping that he could just hold on for the last lap. He came out of the trees on the last lap having picked up a few spots. I didn't know his exact place, but not many kids had passed by yet. Turns out he came 8th place. Last week at the Island Championship he was 9th overall. This time he was 8th in BC and 2nd from the Island. Performance of the day has to go to Forrest. He is a swimmer who just runs for swim practice and for school xc. He even finished with a hole in his ankle from being spiked. 

Forrest

 

Now you might ask, why is his performance the "performance of the day" and not our top girl Miryam? Well, Miryam was expected to be up near the front, Forrest was not. So because he was the surprise of the day, he gets the performance of the day award. =) BUT, I also must note that our girls team came 7th out of 28 teams. 


Results were: For the girls: Miryam 4th, Rebecca 73rd, Hannah 89th, Tkia 95th, Carly 119th, Abigail 130th, Katelynn 155th. For the boys: Forrest 8th and Brock 45th.

 Girls awards, Miryam in fourth

Boys awards, Forrest in 8th

I got to see D at the race. With so many people around it took a text message to which I then went looking for her. Thankfully I knew her team wears florescent orange practically, so her team was pretty easy to spot. She got to ride a lovely yellow school bus to the event, hah. Thankfully we did parent drivers to this one!


Now that high school cross country is done, it's time to concentrate on my own training for Nationals, which happens to be going well at the moment. I just finished a strong week of base type training that has left me feeling good. I have no idea what the future holds for workouts as I get them 1 week at a time, but in a way I like that because I can concentrate on 1 week at a time. November 27th will be here before I know it though, so I just plan to keep myself healthy and injury free.