DCXC

Carl Klein woke up one night to a police officer knocking on the window of his Ford Explorer. He was parked in a lot right off the highway, and the officer told him he couldn’t sleep there. Carl started his car, drove to another location and fell asleep again.

He was 17 years old.

In that first stretch of a cross country race, everything seems within control. Runners bide their time, some try to bank a few seconds, maybe break the field, or do something otherworldly. When all of those plans come together, it’s chaos. And out of chaos, at the Virginia High School League, four teams wound up at the top of the standings in the boys 6A race, separated by four points, with Chantilly on top. Oakton’s Jack Stoney won the individual title in 15:24, a personal record.

In the 5A race, Thomas Edison’s Louis Colson continued his dominant year, winning in 15:06. It’s the first year the state’s reclassification has split up schools into six races, versus the previous three. 6A results   5A results

The girls 6A races at the Virginia High School League cross country championships were short on drama, but featured plenty of firsts for Northern Virginia programs.

West Springfield’s Caroline Alcorta pulled away from the pack within seconds of the start and bolted to a 29-second lead by the first mile on her way to a 39-second win over Lake Braddock’s Hannah Christen, setting a course record in 17:13 at the Great Meadows in Fauquier County. In winning the 6A title, the first state meet after redistricting ended the former three-classification system, she ran was 32 seconds faster than she ran for second place last year, and her first cross country state title.

Scaling the final steep hill towards the finish line of the D.C. State High School Cross Country Championships at Fort Dupont Park in Washington D.C., Georgetown Day School teammates Tristan Colaizzi and Aiden Pillard impulsively decided to finish the race together, hand in hand. Having trained and raced side by side all season, often finishing within seconds of each other, made racing down the final straight away together at the DC championship meet even more special. Though they finished with an identical time of 17:34 for the 5k race, Pillard, a junior, was officially declared the winner, and later MVP of the boys race. Colaizzi, a sophomore, was happy for Pillard and with his own performance, saying, “It hurt, but it hurt good, and there’s nothing better than running next to teammates.”

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Nora McUmber‘s dominant performance wasn’t the story Saturday at the Montgomery County Cross Country Championships. With a 46-second lead, an observer who didn’t come to expect that performance from the race’s defending champion might think she was lost, warming up, or trailing an earlier race that had long since finished. Though she contributed a single point to the team’s total with her victory, the clump of teammates a few places back put the Barons on top.

“She’s gaining a lot of confidence with these races,” said coach Chad Young. “She respects her competition and knows a lot of girls can be competitive with her in the right race, but she’s getting an idea what she can do.”

It was an exercise in resilience.

After three days of rain, things weren’t so much up in the air for the local cross country scene as they were under water. The Glory Days Invitational was called off, Bull Run Regional Park was flooded. The golf course at Georgetown Prep was too soft and slippery, but coach Greg Dunston was adamant about holding the meet. Teams were coming from Delaware and Chicago to race.

Pacers New Balance Cross Country Tour Podcasts from the Georgetown Prep Invitational on Oct 12, 2013

Segment #1 Race Introduction with podcast hosts Chris Farley of Pacers Running Stores & Johnny Cakes Auville from the Sports Junkies

More than 100 runners’ feet hitting the ground on an open field toward wooded trails. Trudging up a hill, giving every last bit of effort with legs and shoes covered in mud. A strong storm just minutes away from plummeting the course; nobody paying it any mind. Team spirit filling the air as competitors burst into the finish chute and turn back around to cheer for their friends.

It may seem like a typical high school cross country race, but the racers were fathers and mothers with jobs and mortgages. They were finishing the Montgomery County Road Runners Club’s Running with the June Bugs, not a dual meet against a rival school.

In the 1980s – before Internet forums – Langley High School’s Erin Keogh was the fastest high school distance runner in the country.

Now Erin Breitenbach, she recently did a Google search of her maiden name and said she found these “ridiculous things on some blog.”