Cross country: With meets tightly packed, runners battle fatigue

Junior Charles Qi felt nervous as he watched the brown, dusty trail of the Crystal Springs course draw closer outside the bus window. The hilly, 2.95 mile Crystal Springs course would be his second race in seven days; for other runners, it was their third.

With the Artichoke Invitational on Saturday [Oct. 1] and Crystal Springs on Tuesday [Oct. 4], finding time to take a rest day was difficult, Qi said.

Normally, runners like Qi use Saturday as a rest day if they know they will be running on Tuesday — without it, they needed to change their workout plans. Even though Qi skipped the Artichoke Invitational, he still felt the fatigue from running two races in a 7-day span.

“Running three races in a row just tires you out in general,” Qi said.

Nonetheless, in spite of their fatigue, seven runners set personal records on the course. But even with these strong individual performances, the team struggled against tough competition from schools such as Palo Alto and Monta Vista. In the boys’ race, the team placed ninth out of 12 schools, led by junior Amit Nag, who finished in 16:41, and sophomore David Berkowitz Sklar, who finished at 17:27, respectively.

Qi, who finished with a time of 18:21, is confident that the team’s performance will continue to improve.

“As a team, we’ll get stronger as the season goes on,” Qi said. “We should be in good shape to re-qualify to states.”

The girls’ team did not attend the Artichoke Invitational, but still competed in two meets (the Central Park Meet on Sept. 27 and Crystal Springs) in a 7-day span. The girls’ team finished last among all 14 teams, led by freshman Julia Hoffman, who ran 15:19 at Central Park and 21:56 at Crystal Springs.

The teams have three meets left in the season before league finals on Nov 1. The CCS championship will be on Nov. 12.