Author: Charlie Ban

More than 1,900 high school cross country runners christened the inaugural DCXC Invitational at Kenilworth Park in Northeast D.C. Saturday afternoon. They came from Virginia, Maryland, D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and battled for five hours on a warm fall afternoon.

[button-red url=”http://dcxc.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/#/team_totals” target=”_self” position=”left”] Team scores [/button-red] The meet split up varsity teams among classes, giving spectators eight chances to watch runners race against their peers. The format also switched up the invitational style in the middle of the season. Each race scored three runners, and the results compiled for all races led to Virginia’s James Madison winning the girls’ races over Lake Braddock, Ocean Lakes, Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Winston Churchill; Lake Braddock won the boys’ team title over Pennsylvania’s Cardinal O’Hara, Winston Churchill, James Madison and Gonzaga. Lake Braddock also won the combined boys’ and girls’ team title, over James Madison, Winston Churchill, James F. Robinson and Bethesda-Chevy Chase.

Laid end-to-end, the races by the scoring five of a cross country team would stretch 15.5 miles.

As cool as that would be, it would take forever, so the Braddock Relays cuts it in half, gives the runners and atmosphere otherwise saved for high school football games and pits the teams against one another, one runner at a time.

Every week during the cross country season, we’ll hear from our RunWashington coaches panel to learn what they liked about the most recent races, including some normative judgments that I, as a journalist, feel unqualified to make.

Local teams ran at the Monroe Parker, Great Meadows, Lake Forest, Seahawk and Brunswick invitationals, among others. The heat and humidity played a big part in slowing times down.