By Caitlin Cole – @DHSCCTF
Saturday was perhaps not the most ideal for a cross-country meet. But, despite the weather, the Battle of the Border still went on. (That’s the thing about cross country. I played soccer for 8 years before switching from cleats to spikes, and if the weather was bad, most times the game would be canceled. But not this sport. Rain or shine, we are out there on the trails and the roads, doing a long run or some interval work). It’s safe to say that this Battle of the Border had some unique challenges; inches of thick mud and puddles everywhere made for a difficult day, to say the least.
Dover didn’t have anyone in the freshman races, so we didn’t leave the school until just after noon on Saturday (a nice change from the early wakeups for Manch and Blackbear!). As soon as we got to Hudson, though, the rain came. Any hope that the weather would hold off was gone and we did our best to put up the tent (a job made difficult with so many stubborn 14 to 17-year-olds) as fast as possible.
Despite the rain, the girls’ JV race went awesome. The two Lilys were only 0.4 seconds apart from one another, Isabella ripped a PR, etc. The squad came in 4th overall and was the second Division I team, which is very exciting going into JV states next week. As mentioned last week, for the first time in a while we have some real depth on both girls’ teams, which is
just so exciting. Boys JV held strong despite the increasingly muddy conditions. Girls Varsity came in 7th overall, led by Anique in her third-consecutive sub-20 performance. Our top four girls were all very close to one another and 5 & 6 were one second apart. Shoutout to Izi for running her first cross-country race in almost a year! Varsity boys probably had it worst, seeing as five races had already gone by the time they ran, so the course was just a mess. But Clayton led the way in a new PR, and everyone made it.
The Alvirne course is one of my personal favorites, and I think a lot of my teammates really enjoy it as well. It feels like a real cross-country course, and it’s not as painful as some of the other ones we run. However, I cannot emphasize enough just how muddy it was. Only one person on our team took a fall (by some miracle) but everyone’s legs were caked in mud by the time they finished.
Right now we are going into kind of a weird training period. By the time the rounds of states come around nobody will have raced in at least two weeks, which hasn’t been the case in a while. Workouts are on the books for tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday for the girls after the boys’ session today. For the time being, we will just continue to put our heads down and work (maybe… maybe we’ll just have some fun with it). Can’t wait to see everyone out on the courses in a few weeks– championship season here we come!!
