The Radnor cross country team opened their season on the killer hills at the Centaur Invite last Saturday. We pulled together a first place finish over nearly 50 teams without a few key runners who're out or just coming off of injuries. The slow times and misleading course descriptions floating around don't give much credit to the outstanding performances I watched from all the races that morning.
The course was not at all unlike the FootLocker West Regional qualifying course out in Walnut, CA that I ran at the last two years. The infamous hills, Switchback, Poop-Out and Reservoir that many runners from the West wake up at night in a cold sweat just thinking about racing up, are nicely replicated here at DeSales University. The Centaur course consists of a very tricky, flat, and even downhill first mile that dumps you at the bottom of of switchback hills right after the first mile marker. After a well deserved flat stretch to the 2nd mile marker, we had to run around a field of what I heard were strawberry plants, but could also have been green beans. Who knows. Nobody really remembers that part of the course, because of the mountains that everyone had to run up at that point.
A huge round of applause for whoever came up with the course. Although everyone from my team, and I'm sure other teams as well, complained about how hard and impossible it was, it was a great first invite, if not only for the hill work we all got, but just the fact that everyone will get a huge boost of confidence from the times that will make an amazing and sudden drop in about a week, depending on the next race.
I was pretty nervous before gun time. My first race for Radnor, and first real cross country team, and it had to be against 300+ girls. It was also going to be another new experience for me, racing with a team who knows what it takes to win, and actually want it as bad as the six others standing with their toes on the start line.
Before the race, we put our heads together to come up with a race plan, and came up with a first mile split, that we were going to try and hit as a pack. I was nominated the honorary pacer, and am proud to say I didn't lead them into the infamous hole of going out and following the pack. We hit the mile, and nailed our time right on the second.
My mom was standing on the sidelines as we came by and heard someone comment on the Radnor girls, who were still in a tight pack through the 2 mile point. And then the answer "Oh, they're ranked, they don't count". As if. We all got a laugh out of it though, and collected our first place trophy that I think was legitimately earned.
Overall it was a great meet. We're waiting for two girls to fully recover from their injuries and definitely looking forward to racing against the big dogs in New York at the end of the month.
