MMSD City Duals - Great Day for Running

 It looked different then normal but the weather felt almost fall like and Madison Memorial Cross Country officially returned to racing. Races had less then 50 runners, bird watchers were our only spectators, the prairie grasses have yet to grow in, and runners raced in masks. That being said... they counted down from ten, fired the gun, and runners sprinted from the start to the first yellow flag.... 5k later they returned to cross a finish mat and receive a time for their efforts. It was nice to be wearing the JMM uniforms again and have another team on the course with us to compete. Our guys took another step towards their goals for this season. We saw great improvement from Intrasquad to today and continue down a positive path.

Race #1 saw 13 of our guys take on the entire East team. This group benefited the most from having some other competitors around to help with pacing and providing someone to chase or run away from. We saw improvements of 45 seconds to 4 minutes from runners in this race. They were led by Micah S up front who spent a good portion of the race battling with East's backend Varsity runners. Charlie M ran a lifetime PR and now sets his eyes on being a sub 20:00 runner. Tommy S was our top freshman in this race and continues to make improvement each week. Alex B also ran a lifetime PR as our 4th finisher. Felipe ran his first race of the season on a short week of training rounding out our top 5. These runners have been working hard at practice and today they got to enjoy season bests. Keep up the good work & keep improving!

Race #2 saw 14 of our runners take on the entire West team. This race was more like a dual meet as we had our varsity against their varsity. In a head to head competition we beat West in varsity 25 to 30 and also in JV 17 to 44. Dylan A led us by winning the race in 17:15. Our gap between Dylan and our next runner was too large today but I know these guys can close that gap. Aidan P was sub 18:00 to finish 3rd and Mick S came in 5th finishing in 18:03. Jack G had a nice race just missing his lifetime PR and Henry B finished with a strong kick to be our 5th runner and outkick some West runners for important team points. We would like to see our gap between our #1 - 5 runners be less than 1:00 and closer to :45 seconds...today it was at 1:05. We also are aiming to get 5 runners under 17:30 and all our varsity runners under 18:00. Eddie C ran a nice lifetime PR and Bobby ran 18:33 to round out our varsity today. Our JV group was separated by :33 seconds which is perfect, we aim for :30 spread...now we need to move this group around 18:30 and under. Jonathan B was our fast freshman on the day and had a lifetime PR as did Owen B. Alex B ran sub 20:00 in his first official race for JMM and has his eyes set on faster times. We ran really well to beat a good West team today in both varsity and JV and now we set our eyes on bigger goals. 

If the both races were scored together it would have looked like this:

RESULTS

https://my.raceresult.com/168587/

PHOTOS

Photo album HERE

NEXT MEET

Friday April 23rd @ Lake Farm Park

MMSD City Teams - "Varsity" & JV race

** No Bus...families should plan for their own transportation to & from meet

Race 1 * Drop Off/Arrive - 3:15pm

Race 1 Race - 4:30pm

Race 1 Pick up/Depart - 5:00pm

Spectators - TBA

Race 2 * Drop Off/Arrive - 4:15pm

Race 2 Race - 5:30pm

Race 2 Pick up/Depart - 6:00pm

Spectators - TBA

* Racers will know by Wed 4/21 which race they are officially in (Race 1 will be top 14 "varsity" runners)

NOTES

"Tuesday Grade Reports" are beginning...turn in your work and get those grades where they belong

In - Person classes starting up...get in a good routine, keep following our mitigation practices

4/24 & 4/25 (weekend) - no team practices...athletes will run on their own