Athlete 1: Whoa, these are big races.
Athlete 2: Yea, I got on live results, and just kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling…
The Nike De La Salle Invitational is a competitive NorCal meet. Many strong NorCal teams show up, and the races feel large. So, if you thought DLS felt big, you are right! Here are the stats for our races:
| JV Girls 3 Mile | 135 Finishers | 12 Teams |
| JV Boys 3 Mile – top 10 | 181 | 21 |
| Varsity Girls 3 Mile | 167 | 22 |
| Varsity Boys 3 Mile | 204 | 31 |
| JV Boys 3 Mile – unlimited | 146 | 12 |
| FS Girls 2 Mile | 115 | 15 |
You will not see many cross-country races with 31 teams on the starting line. This competition creates a challenge that helps us grow—and big races are fun*!
For Monta Vista athletes, DLS can be a rite of passage—for many first-year runners, this was their first 3-mile race. That first time can increase the anxiety—and the reward.
We arrived at Newhall Park in Concord before rosy fingered dawn had climbed over the East Bay foothills, and as we set up our camp, we all felt anticipation, excitement, and nerves.
JV Girls Start Us Off
The grass in the starting area was still damp when the gun went off for the first race. I felt like our JV girls set a nice tone for the whole day with some smart, solid racing. Our first finisher was Katherine Wang with a 22:53. Katherine’s day deserves a little attention; this is only Katherine’s second race and her first month of cross-country, yet she ran a very smart race. Katherine was in 53rd place when I caught her and the timer had her at 50th for the first split, and she moved up steadily to finish 35th—nice pacing, and I’d guess that moving up like that felt rewarding. Her average pace was 7:38 per mile—15 seconds per mile faster than her pace on the two-mile Lagoon Valley course just two weeks ago. There are a lot of ways to run a race, and we all can find tactics that work for us, if we are focused and dedicated and care to keep working at our craft. Eva Huang and Alex Perrault were close behind—and they both had faster paces than in their two-mile runs at Lagoon Valley, too! (I’m going to discuss this more later.) Yoyo Zhong and Sophia Li closed out the scoring for the 8th place girls’ team.
The JV boys featured several of our freshman boys running their first three mile race, and their first race that included high school juniors and seniors; and while they were a bit nervous, they did not disappoint. Ethan Wong left everything on the course, and his 17:52 was good for 26th place; there was only one freshman who finished in front of him. Takumi Matsunami ran another strong race and was only eight seconds and four places back of Ethan. Fellow freshman Rishabh Madhan was next, with senior Kento Murase and junior Advaith Prabhu completing the scoring as the team took 10th place out of 21 teams racing.
Varsity Shines
The varsity girls rolled to a 14th place team finish with Miranda Hsu and Taylor Orr up front for MVXC. Our third runner, Naomi Hsu put up an impressive 1:24 personal record on the Newhall Park course. Melinda Zhao and Myra Mishra came in within seconds of each other to wrap up the scoring, with Alexandra Qiu and Kaitlyn Lum close by.
Tarun Gandhi and Sam Heinonen put up Monta Vista’s two quickest times of the day, and both boys had monster personal records; a 1:42 PR for Tarun, while Sam knocked off an incredible 3:08 from his freshman mark at Newhall. The varsity boys had good days all around, as Constantine Chua (he came from the land down under), Ritik Shenoy, and Jonah Chang also put up PRs of 1:07, 1:06, and 51 seconds respectively. Akshat Ambekar and Aiden White were scoring runners, along with Tarun, Sam, and Constantine, as the boys team took 15th out of 31 teams.
The second JV boys’ team had an impressive 8th place finish, as sophomore and budding Instagram star Oliver Perrault earned a spot on the podium, finishing 13th for a medal that I hope he is still wearing at school on Monday (only half joking). Oliver’s 19:08 was the 9th fastest time by a Monta Vista runner all day, and sophomore Aadit Shinde was only a few seconds back at 19:33. The day wrapped up with spirited finishes by Fiona Shi, Victoria Dulay, and Rachel Wang in the frosh-soph two-mile race.
Record Wrap Up
Tarun entered the day with the third fastest time by a Monta Vista freshman boy on the Newhall Park course, and he left as the fifth fastest—both Ethan and Takumi went under Tarun’s frosh time. Rishabh now holds the ninth quickest mark. Katherine is our fifth fastest all-time freshman girl on this course, mere seconds after legend Anika Bhandarkar’s frosh mark. Miranda, Taylor, and Naomi are top 20 overall, as are Tarun and Sam.
MVXC have not been back to Newhall Park for two years, so the list of personal records is not long—but it is an impressive list. My preliminary plan is for Monta Vista to return to DLS in 2027, so you all will have a shot at obliterating your 2026 times!
Newhall Park Three-Mile Personal Records
| Athlete | PR by |
| Sam Heinonen | 3:08 |
| Tarun Gandhi | 1:42 |
| Naomi Hsu | 1:24 |
| Constantine Chua | 1:07 |
| Ritik Shenoy | 1:06 |
| Medha Rustagi | :57 |
| Jonah Chang | :51 |
Your Limits are Unknown, and Unknowable
Or, a short meditation on growth mindset.
Many Monta Vista runners moved up from racing two-miles at Lagoon Valley to three miles at Newhall Park—yet they went faster. This table highlights runners who were more than 10 seconds per mile faster at Newhall Park:
Pace Improvement: Lagoon Valley 2 mile to Newhall Park 3 mile
| Athlete | Pace/mile at Lagoon Valley | Pace/mile at Newhall Park | Improvement |
| Aadit Shinde | 7:26 | 6:31 | +55 sec/mile |
| Rohan Kumar | 10:15 | 9:40 | +35 |
| Alex Perrault | 8:35 | 8:05 | +30 |
| Harry Zhu | 8:01 | 7:43 | +18 |
| Aditya Sarcar | 7:07 | 6:51 | +16 |
| Katherine Wang | 7:53 | 7:38 | +15 |
| Advaith Prabhu | 6:51 | 6:37 | +14 |
| Aditya Prasad | 7:43 | 7:30 | +13 |
| Sophia Li | 8:33 | 8:21 | +12 |
| Vikram Mallya | 8:40 | 8:29 | +11 |
| Kavyansh Kumawat | 7:14 | 7:03 | +11 |
The Lagoon Valley course does have more and larger hills, but still—these athletes went a full mile further, a 50% longer course, and went faster the whole way! That’s impressive.
There is a lot of statistical noise here, so I would not want to put a high amount of confidence in any cause behind these improvements. And I wouldn’t worry if your results don’t look like this–there is so much statistical noise, we don’t have enough data to read too much into this. (I have been training an AI regression model but it makes as many excuses as it makes predictions.) I don’t think this is primarily an improvement in fitness; we do gain some fitness with two weeks of training, but our aerobic gains don’t explain everything here. We could go back and see who was sick or not, who slept better, or who had a fight with their mom over a score on a math midterm, who had their lucky socks, was Venus rising in their astrological house, yada yada. We might try looking at experience; we could try to identify who has learned what about racing at Lagoon Valley and how they applied that knowledge at the De La Salle race. I think that is part of it, but every one of us learned something after our race at Lagoon Valley, so.
What does feel right to me is a growth mindset. None of these runners let their prior race define them. Aadit didn’t think, “well I guess my pace is mid-7s” he went out and bested that. The reason I think that applies to all of us, is because we all are going to have good days and bad days, in running and in life, and I think it’s important to keep in mind the possibility that there are better days ahead. There are better days ahead for you if even if you were running out of your shoes at De La Salle, it was the best run you have ever had, you can’t beliieve how strong you felt, OMG that was the best; there are better days ahead, still, that was not your peak (but still–enjoy that day, savor that day!). If you came across the line leaking oil and ready to drop, you have better days ahead, too; trust me. This isn’t some woo-hoo way to look at life, I’m not saying that if you visualize yourself running a four-minute mile and build a dream board that somehow you can manifest that four-minute mile into existence. What I am saying is that whatever pace you run in a race, even on a PR day, that probably isn’t your limit—you can go faster, with more training, a slightly improved fueling plan, a bit more sleep, a bit more of an attitude. And if the next race you gag up a snail pace, that doesn’t mean that the PR you ran before was a fluke; if you did it once, you can do it again, and better. Maybe you need to try something different, or maybe that race with snail pace was just a bad day. And if you bomb a math test it doesn’t mean you are a failed mathematician, just as if you aced it you are not done with the semester. Just because you have an article rejected, you are not a failed author, and if your ceramic bowl cracks in the kiln that is not proof you are not a failed potter. Take in the feedback, think about what happened, talk to friends and coaches and teammates and captains and teachers, get a plan, go back to work, and move on. Be open to the next time being better. Be open to resolving that the next time will be better.
Your limits are unknown, and unknowable. We don’t know what you are capable of. We do know we have not found your limits yet.
It is going to be OK.
Be open to success, with your teammates.
Oh, My Ears
Lastly, I am so proud of everyone and grateful for all of you who cheered for their teammates and for others on the course. That mob of purple at the finish of our last race was inspiring! It matters a lot to your teammates and that matters to you and your performance. Everyone deserves to feel like their team has their back. It doesn’t take a ton of physical effort to be a great teammate, but it does take some attention and intention.
Did you thank a race official???
Links
The results are up on XCStats (if you want splits you need to go to Diablo Timing). Coach Smith has posted photos in band, and Mr Heinonen posted more in the cloud.
*So are small races. Medium sized races are fun, too. Sometimes, racing your brother to the refrigerator is fun. Racing is funTM.