Now that a lot of the Fairfax County running gang was back together at the Monroe Parker Invitational, Albert Velikonja decided to see who had done their homework over the summer.
A mile and a half in to Burke Lake’s 2.98-mile course, he surged, and looked around to see how it all shook out.
“I wasn’t trying to run away with it, I just wanted to see if anyone would come with me,” he said.
Herndon senior Colin McCauley and West Springfield seniors Chris Weeks and Sam Pritchard all joined him in the front.
To hear Tom Brumlik tell it, Albert Velikonja approaches an August time trial with the same intensity as he does a state championship final.
“It was pretty evident from the first lap last year that he was going to be pretty good,” Brumlik said of the now-senior, who was trying cross country after a moderately successful sophomore track season.
This was before he even took the field for a serious race, at the DCXC Invitational, where he finished sixth in the junior race.
“He just loves to race, and that’s hard to coach,” Brumlik said. “He has a natural competitiveness that’s easy to build around.
As a freshman, Jenny Schilling’s Heritage Pride jersey never fit quite right.
The subtext wasn’t lost on Nancy Merriman.
“She didn’t know exactly what her talent level was,” Merriman said. “She was trying to figure herself out in the sport, and that took a little while.”
Schilling had been a dancer until sixth grade, when she followed her brother onto the NOVA Athletic Club and she retrained her legs to run.
Like many trios, each member brings something special to the group. Among West Springfield’s Three Terrors, now seniors, Sean Stuck won the state outdoor 3200 meter championship in 6A and Chris Weeks was second in the 1600 meters. But on the cross country course, Sam Pritchard leads the Spartans. He finished third in the Virginia 6A meet last fall, and is the top returning runner this season.
“Sam is the most natural cross country runner (among the three seniors), but he’s the least flashy,” said coach Chris Pellegrini. “He shows the most natural instincts and that’s shown in his races. He has the best mid-race understanding of where he has to put himself to do what he wants to do.”
Ignorance was bliss for Piper Dean in her first cross country race.
She took the line at the DCXC Invitational wearing trainers. On an extremely muddy course, that played a part in helping her finish second in the sophomore race, when other competitors’ spikes were working too well to dig into the much.
“I didn’t even know people wore spikes,” she said.
She figured that out over the course of a season that culminated with a fourth place finish in the Virginia 6A state meet, in what she called a bad race. Sure enough, it was the only time in five tries she didn’t finish in top two.
She was new to the Yorktown cross country team, moonlighting in the sport after years playing soccer. She still considers herself a soccer player, spending four days at week practicing for the Yorktown and Braddock Road teams, plus playing both Saturdays and Sundays. She made it to about one cross country practice per week.
“I’ll give her soccer coaches a lot of credit, she came to us in great shape,” said Tom Brumlik. “She surprised us in every meet.”
St. John’s College High School track coach Desmond Dunham chats about the DCXC Cross Country Invitational Sept. 28 and Joanna returns to talk about the one friend she made in Syracuse over the last year.
Race like the pros. That’s what high school runners have been able to do whenever they spike up at the Agricultural Farm Park in Derwood, Md. The Montgomery County-managed facility played host to the 2009 USATF Cross Country Championships, and it also led the composite scores of MoCo Running’s inaugural course ranking.
A collaboration between MoCo Running and RunWashington, this was vastly Kevin Milsted’s brainchild. We surveyed coaches from around the D.C. area and members of the All-RunWashington preseason teams. This gave us a solid and well-informed sample, many of whom were able to evaluate at least one of the nine courses that made the final.
You can read Kevin’s analysis in robust detail here. He also examines the survey’s limitations and potential for improvement here.
It’s all worth the time for anyone interested in the courses that make up some of the most popular races around the D.C. area.
For the sixth year, RunWashington’s coaches panel has chosen 62 of the most promising cross country runners in the Washington, D.C. area, naming them to our preseason honor teams.
The panel prized cross country achievements from last fall, but took into account improvement during the track season when selecting the teams. The top 10 boys and top 10 girls, regardless of geography, assemble the All-RunWashington team. Coaches also selected an additional team for Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland.
On Wednesdays this season, RunWashington will publish profiles of the All-RunWashington team members, starting Aug. 28 and running for 10 weeks. Check them out and get to know some of the best this sport has to offer!
RunWashington, along with Pacers Running and New Balance, will be celebrating the start of the 2019 cross country season Aug. 25 by recognizing 62 of the most promising young cross country runners in the D.C. area.
A preseason pep rally, held at the Pacers Running pop-up at 600 H Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20002, will open at 5:30 p.m. and start up at 6 p.m.
It’s a chance to mix with the people you’ll be running into on race courses throughout the fall while you’re not trying to grind each other into the grass, hear from a Foot Locker Cross Country champion and get excited for the upcoming season. Wear your team’s t-shirt to show off [insert mascot’s name here] pride, intimidate your rivals by telling them how much you ran during your vacation at altitude, show off your watch tan lines … it’s going to be great!
In 2012, Chantilly High School track and cross country coach Matt Gilchrist wanted to run a mile with one of his graduating seniors, state champion Sean McGorty. But the weight Gilchrist had gained over the years of putting his coaching before his own health stopped him in his tracks.
“I remember getting about 600 meters around the track and I was done. I couldn’t do it,” said Gilchrist, who previously ran at Gettysburg College. “At the time, I was 40 years old and couldn’t run a mile.”
But this past May, 162 pounds lighter, Gilchrist cruised around the track alongside one of his graduating runners, Nicole Re, who called the four laps together “a memory that will stick with me.”
