With two first place races complete, the girls cross country team had an excellent start to the year. They then followed this up with a second place finish at the Mook meet. As well as the girls, the boys team has also performed admirably. Although they placed 5th at the TRL meet, they rebounded with a 4th place finish at the Mook among 25 teams.
Junior Dominic Bender, the current lead boys varsity athlete, has multiple strategies for preparation that he uses before every meet and that helped his team with their placement at the Mook meet.
“I just think about what I want to run,” said Bender. “Kind of visualize that time, visualize the people I’m going to be running with.”
Although Bender ran an good meet at the Mook with a PR time of 16:37, he doesn’t plan to stop there and aims to get a time below 16 before the end of the season.
“I plan to just go out there, have some fun and PR, I mean, it’s all about just getting better,” said Bender. “Every single time you go on a race, every time you go out there, you got to get faster.”
As well as the boys team, the girls team also had many standout runners from the Mook meet. One of these runners, Junior Grace Houlihan, trained very differently to what she normally did to prepare for the new season.
“I ran a lot,” said Houlihan “I usually am more of a short mileage kind of person, but I put in a lot of miles this summer so that I hopefully could have a good base to start the season.”
This strategy clearly paid off as Houlihan ran a PR time of 18:12 at the Mook meet.
The team looks to continue their success with the TRL Pac meet on Thursday, Oct. 17th.