A Return to Baylands Allows MVXC To Show How Far We Have Run!

I have never taken a journalism class, but I understand one of the fundamentals of a news article is “don’t bury the lead!”  So here you go, gentle reader:

70% of the MVXC runners who toed the line at Baylands on October 18 showed improvement!

Out of 41 runners on Tuesday, 24 athletes had personal records for the Baylands course!  Madi Polidoro, Juliana Banes, Jay Zhang, Andrew Liu, and Raj Thapliyal all had PRs of more than one minute!  Seniors Avani Kalari, Sean Basu, Ari Rajamam and Amogh Rajagopal took advantage of their last run at Baylands in their high school career (five runs for Avani and Amogh, six for Sean and a seventh run for Ari!) to notch PRs–including an incredible sprint to the finish by Sean to pass a big group of runners at the line!  Freshman Ravi Polisetti, in his first varsity race, was not intimidated one bit–he rose to the challenge with a 47 second PR and was second freshman to finish in the entire varsity boys race.  In addition to the PRs recorded by MVXC athletes, Joey Suresh improved from a month prior at Baylands, Nikhita Saldi continued to work into championship season form with her fastest race pace of the year, while Katie Li and Navya Parvathaneni had the fastest race paces of their lives as they both went under 9 minutes/mile for the first time ever in a cross country race.

Keep working, you will improve!  Even if Tuesday was not your best day, that’s OK, if you keep working the results will come.  I’d guess that our team has combined to run almost 20,000 miles so far this season (that number seems like fantasy, but I’d bet its pretty close).   As a team this season so far we have recorded 299 finish times, that’s more than 1,000 miles just of racing.  Many of those miles have been on hot dusty trails or in the early dawn in Fremont Older or Lagoon Valley.   As we contemplate these difficult to believe numbers, a quote from our friend Angela Duckworth are worth repeating (and pasting on your bathroom mirror):

“There are no shortcuts to true excellence.”

As you might imagine, the team results were solid also.  The varsity girls took 6th place, only two points out of fifth, with a 1:30 spread of Nikhita, Anika, Avani, Valerie and Megan; only CCS #1 Los Altos had a tighter spread than the MVXC top five.  A tight spread matters a lot, in big meets where a lagging runner can cost a lot of points fast, and in practice where a tight group of runners can push each other to new levels of excellence.  The girls look good to go in the upcoming races.  The varsity boys took 1oth, with freshman Ravi joining the strong 1-2 of Denny and Tanay, who both finished in the top 20; Ari and Gene completed the scoring for the boys.  The JV girls matched their sisters in varsity with another 6th place finish, lead by Madi’s 8th place finish–that is Madi’s second straight top 10 finish!   Katie Lee and Jasmine Varma were the next two in for the JV girls.  The JV boys took 7th, with Sean, Paru and Amogh all coming in within five seconds of each other at the front of the MVXC pack.  The frosh-soph boys wrapped up the day in 1oth place, with a 1:13 spread in two even tighter packs–Darren and Soham finished at 19:52.8 and 19:53.2, while Andrew, Rishi and Ethan Y were 21:06.1, 21:06.5, 21:06.5.  Nothing like a little competition to push everyone to work hard for the rematch at Crystal in two weeks!

Results have been posted, and there are more photos too.

MVXC @Baylands 2 Results and Personal Records