The "Run-Down": Bob Firman Invite (Boise, ID)
In sports psychology, we talk about runners “getting in the zone.” For this race, it was just as much about sports physiology and being in the right time zone. Several hours prior to our departure time, I realized that our itinerary did not compensate for the time zone change from Washougal to Boise. Therefore we were a bit harried (ironically, one nickname for XC runners is “Harriers”) on the journey to Eagle Island and we basically lost an hour of sleep time. Next time we take this trip, we will make the appropriate adjustments. We still managed to squeeze in appropriate fun time along the way and truly enjoyed our “Limitless Pizza” patio experience where we unleashed the team wrist-bands to athletes, parents and siblings. Thanks, Limitless America, for helping make our trip an incredible experience.
The race location was at Eagle Island State Park, some 17 miles northwest of the Boise airport. We did not see any eagles in the air, but we did catch a quick glance at some wild turkeys on the ground doing a very poor impersonation of our national bird.
Thanks to his mom being one of our designated drivers, freshman Gavin Keyser got to experience the trip and be the first one to the course (bright and early) and compete in the freshman race. He managed to place well in front of the middle of the pack with a time of 19:46.6.
You’ve heard the old logging phrase “Let the chips fall where they may”? Well, that was one of the themes for the trip as junior Caden Lowman was not assigned a timing chip to begin with. That took some extra effort to get one for him, and then senior Gabriel Dinnel actually lost his out on the course during the race. That took some more effort to make sure he was included in the results.
Eventually the varsity boys got to be in the showcase “Elite” race, being one of the top 20 teams on site that day. Could we be in the upper half? Although we knew trying to compete against teams like Great Oak (ranked #3 in the country) was out of the question, we found some realistic but challenging targets like North Central, one of the top ten teams in Washington (and National Champs a few years ago). Lining up next to them in the starting area wetted our appetite to run well. Gabriel (15:55.5) led the team as usual and ran a P.R. by a whole half a second. Hey, every half of a second counts. Classmate Troy Prince-Butterfield, nursing a minor knee issue, stayed within a minute of him… barely, as the gap to him was 59.9 seconds. Senior Koy Chaston also got a P.R. by the slimmest of margins (0.1 seconds) with a time of 17:31.0. One more senior (Ian Palmer) got into the act of “by a narrow margin” as he clipped 3.3 seconds of his best ever, but made our all-time top 10 list by a mere 3 tenths of a second. The biggest P.R. of the day went to junior Jackson Keyser; his time of 17:03.3 was a hair over a 30 second P.R. The boys placed 15th of the twenty teams in the race but ran better than more than 95% of the others in remaining races during the day. All 14 teams ahead of us had school enrollments larger than WHS, so no school smaller than us beat us. Our performance, although not quite as good as what we were really hoping for, is something we can be very proud of.
Our varsity girls ran in the Div II race. Senior Amelia Pullen opted out of the more competitive race to run with her teammates. The best of the other girls in this race were not happy about that as Amelia took the lead near the mile mark and did not look back. She stretched her lead to right at 30 seconds at the finish line as she broke the Div II meet record by 7 seconds. Freshman Savea Mansfield endured a significant side ache from the mile mark to the finish with a time of 21:05.3, which was good enough for 41st place and to rank #7 on our all-time top ten list. Sophomore Meryl Keeler with seniors Brooklyn Bausch and Annabelle Palmer put some respectable numbers on the board placing in the upper half, allowing the Panthers to capture 11th place of the forty some teams (34 of which were complete).
The trip was fun, but exhausting as many of the Panthers had peaked eyes upon arriving at the park due to the trip and the time zone change. We will make some minor adjustments and plan to go back in the future.
Next Wednesday we travel to Abrams Park in Ridgefield to go “mano a mano” with the Spudders!
Coach Terry L. Howard
Here are the line scores:
|
Varsity Boys |
|
1 Mile |
5000 M |
|
|
Gabriel |
26th |
4:57 |
15:55.5 |
P.R. |
|
Troy |
95th |
5:12 |
16:55.4 |
|
|
Ian |
103rd |
5:16 |
17:01.7 |
P.R. |
|
Jackson |
104th |
5:16 |
17:03.3 |
P.R. |
|
Jonathan |
125th |
5:16 |
17:19.9 |
|
|
Koy |
138th |
5:17? |
17:31.0 |
P.R. |
|
Caden |
159th |
|
18:40.1 |
|
|
|
of 165 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Freshman Race |
|
|
|
|
|
Gavin |
92nd |
|
19:46.6 |
|
|
of 255 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Varsity Girls |
|
|
5000 M |
|
|
Amelia |
1st |
5:50 |
18:39.3 |
|
|
Savea |
41st |
6:02? |
21:05.3 |
|
|
Meryl |
107th |
6:52 |
22:56.5 |
|
|
Brooklyn |
109th |
6:52 |
22:59.3 |
|
|
Annabelle |
133rd |
6:54 |
23:27.5 |
|
|
Hallie |
202nd |
|
25:35.2 |
|
|
|
of 260 |
|
|
|