Saturday we had our first m
eet of the season, our home
Knight Invite. The men's race featured 4 teams ranked in the top 16 in
the nation, as well as the 9th ranked team in the NAIA. It is pretty
cool that several good teams decide to come up to our race, and it
helps us to see a little bit of where we are at right away at the
beginning of the season. That is good too because before we started
having our own invitational, we used to go to UW Parkside, which also
was a quality meet with several strong teams. A cool result of having
so many teams similarly talented was that 16 points separated the 2nd
through 6th place teams. I was especially impressed with Denison's
performance. They are just one runner away from having a very solid
team, as if their 5th runner had been with their 4th runner, they would
have beaten two top-20 ranked teams. 
The temperature spiked right after the women's race and it provided a grinding race against the heat for the participants. Many guys were collapsing as they came across the line. Our team had one guy who couldn't see as he crossed the finish line and had also lost some of his memory. Another teammate collapsed several times as he approached the finish line and then eventually made it across by crawling and throwing his chip leg over the mat. A race like this underlines why cross country is so hard core. What did this runner have to gain by crawling those last few feet? He wasn't on our varsity team (18 runners), and he wasn't even going to end up scoring for our JV team (separately scored as a different team at this meet) as five JV runners had
already crossed the line. But he was running for his team anyway
and doing the best that he could, because he loves to run. Cross
country runners know what it means to sacrifice the body in
competition. Quite literally.
One of the strangest feelings about this invitational was that it was technically senior day for our team. Last year we got to race three times at home because of our pre-regional and regional meets, and this year we onl
y had our beginning of the year invitational. Because it
was just the first race of the year however, it was kind of difficult
to comprehend that this was our last home meet ever. Even after the
race, someone asked me about the feelings going through my head at the
time about that, and I had just plain forgotten.
eet of the season, our home
Knight Invite. The men's race featured 4 teams ranked in the top 16 in
the nation, as well as the 9th ranked team in the NAIA. It is pretty
cool that several good teams decide to come up to our race, and it
helps us to see a little bit of where we are at right away at the
beginning of the season. That is good too because before we started
having our own invitational, we used to go to UW Parkside, which also
was a quality meet with several strong teams. A cool result of having
so many teams similarly talented was that 16 points separated the 2nd
through 6th place teams. I was especially impressed with Denison's
performance. They are just one runner away from having a very solid
team, as if their 5th runner had been with their 4th runner, they would
have beaten two top-20 ranked teams. The temperature spiked right after the women's race and it provided a grinding race against the heat for the participants. Many guys were collapsing as they came across the line. Our team had one guy who couldn't see as he crossed the finish line and had also lost some of his memory. Another teammate collapsed several times as he approached the finish line and then eventually made it across by crawling and throwing his chip leg over the mat. A race like this underlines why cross country is so hard core. What did this runner have to gain by crawling those last few feet? He wasn't on our varsity team (18 runners), and he wasn't even going to end up scoring for our JV team (separately scored as a different team at this meet) as five JV runners had
already crossed the line. But he was running for his team anyway
and doing the best that he could, because he loves to run. Cross
country runners know what it means to sacrifice the body in
competition. Quite literally.One of the strangest feelings about this invitational was that it was technically senior day for our team. Last year we got to race three times at home because of our pre-regional and regional meets, and this year we onl
y had our beginning of the year invitational. Because it
was just the first race of the year however, it was kind of difficult
to comprehend that this was our last home meet ever. Even after the
race, someone asked me about the feelings going through my head at the
time about that, and I had just plain forgotten. This Friday we will be traveling to St. Mary's to race in our Pre-Conference Jamboree meet. Until then, kwa herini (Kiswahili for goodbye).
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