Thirty-five personal records in one meet! That’s what I’m talking about.
That’s right, 35 Monta Vista athletes came home from Baylands with new personal records on the 5 km track. We had some of the best weather we can ever remember at Baylands, and experience gained from our race there last month. Runners took advantage of the opportunity to push themselves hard and see what was possible with more course knowledge and a month of training.
Baylands Personal Records Set On October 21
| Name | PR by |
| Victoria Dulay | 3:25 |
| Jolena Lai | 3:21 |
| Rachel Wang | 1:54 |
| Jiwoo Han | 1:45 |
| Advaith Prabhu | 1:36 |
| Eli Wang | 1:28 |
| Agastya Sharma | 1:21 |
| Gary Zhang | 1:14 |
| Aditya Sarcar | 1:09 |
| Caroline Labudde | 1:08 |
| Maxwell Heinonen | 1:02 |
| Kaitlyn Lum | 1:02 |
| Peter Dunn | 0:54 |
| Alexandra Perrault | 0:52 |
| Aadit Shinde | 0:48 |
| Kavyansh Kumawat | 0:42 |
| Myra Mishra | 0:40 |
| Kai Ning Wang | 0:39 |
| Shawn Zeng | 0:37 |
| Naomi Hsu | 0:37 |
| Samuel Heinonen | 0:36 |
| Ethan Wong | 0:29 |
| Taylor Orr | 0:29 |
| Aditya Prasad | 0:25 |
| Aiden White | 0:24 |
| Callen Chua | 0:23 |
| Tarun Gandhi | 0:19 |
| Jayden Mattekatt | 0:16 |
| Jimin Park | 0:14 |
| Fahad Ali | 0:13 |
| Sihoon Lee | 0:11 |
| Medha Rustagi | 0:11 |
| Akshat Ambekar | 0:09 |
| Rohan Kumar | 0:08 |
| Kai Jiao | 0:04 |
Some athletes who did not get PRs still made big improvements from last month’s race at Crystal; Sophia Li and Eva Huang both cut about two minutes off their marks from our last trip to Baylands.
A runner does not earn three minute PRs like the ones Victoria Dulay and Jolena Lai earned with four weeks of training; these improvements and others were also earned by a willingness to push themselves harder. The late running philosopher George Sheehan said, “It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.” Clearly, many of our runners are learning to shut off that little voice and push the pace even when that pace is becoming uncomfortable. When you are in the midst of racing and your legs are tired and your lungs are burning, it’s hard to remember that within half an hour of crossing the finish line we will be asking ourselves, “why didn’t I push harder that second mile?” Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is an important skill for a competitive runner.
We had solid team finishes, with our varsity boys taking 8th and the girls came home in 6th place. Taylor Orr, Miranda Hsu, Alexandra Perrault, Kaitlyn Lum, Vishakha Shastri, Advaith Prabhu, Sam Heinonen, and Tarun Gandhi all finished in the top 25 in their races. There were lots of packs of purple uniforms out on the course. It was incredibly gratifying to all the coaches to see runners who had trained together, working off each other to race well together.
Compete race results and analysis are at XCStats.
Your coaches are so proud of you!
