Chloe Heinz
While many of us had the pleasure of sleeping in as long as we wanted this summer, that wasn’t the case for the cross country runners. They were up bright and early most days of the week training and working hard to get ready for the season.
“This season we’ve really been upping our mileage and our effort too,” senior Elena Garcia said.
“We’ve been running a lot faster and we have a lot of depth on the team. We have a lot of girls with potential as well as girls who are varsity level so that’s really exciting to see.” Garcia said. The intensity has definitely increased this year, especially with such a strong pool of talent.
Unfortunately, there are always some areas to fill where the runners who graduated once occupied. Luckily, that area isn’t as big this year as it has been in the past.
“We only lost one senior from our top five, Astrid Capatinta,” Garcia said. “We also lost Kerenza Robinson because she moved and she was probably one of our number two runners so that’s been hard, but the team is going to be really strong.” Garcia said.
Despite this change in team dynamics, they are looking to accomplish many goals for this season.
“We really want to make it to states this year,” Garcia said.
For both boys and girls cross country, they’re on a structured practice schedule.
“On Mondays we’ll go on a long run which is anywhere between eight to twelve miles, Tuesdays we do a fifty minute run and then Wednesday is a hard workout where we either go to BMR or the canyon to do interval training,” Garcia said. “Thursday is usually a recovery run. Fridays we do a pre-meet if there’s going to be a race on Saturday. Pre-meet runs are usually just a fifty minute run.” The runners dedicate a great deal of hard work and time each week.
“There are a lot of new girls which is really promising for the future,” Garcia said. “We always get a lot of freshmen and even sophomores and juniors that come out.”
The runners will soon be able to showcase the work they’ve invested once races begin.
