It's been a long time since Jenny Simpson ran a cross country race in Colorado, so don't miss this opportunity. Photo by Alan Versaw.
If you don't yet know that this weekend is the USATF Cross Country Championships in Boulder, this will serve as your first and final notice. The fields are loaded with top-tier talent, both local and from across the nation.
The racing is set to take place starting at 8 AM at the Flatirons Golf Course (5706 Arapahoe Avenue) on the east edge of Boulder. The Masters races begin the day, with Junior Women going at 10 AM, Junior Men at 10:45 AM, Open Women at 11:30 AM and Open Men at 12:15 PM. For those who still haven't had enough cross country at that point, there is a 4K Community race at 1:15 PM.
The Junior Women will feature names like Elise Cranny, Katie Rainsberger, and Grace Tinkey, but will also include familiar local names like Emily Cutter, Lauren Anderson, Amy Penn, Lauren Hamilton, Erin McLaughlin, and Megan Percy.
You'll need a longer cheat sheet for the Junior Men. Once we get past the national names like Sam Wharton, Bailey Roth, Sean McGorty, and Estevan De La Rosa, there are names with plenty of local recognition, to include: Daniel Bloom, Ben Butler, Marcel Such, Joel Such, Ethan Gonzales, Ricardo Ocampo, Jerrell Mock, Sam Sahli, Luke Zacharias, Sean Riedel, and David Rieder. Lucky for you, they'll make four circuits of the course, so you can actually have most of them figured out in unfamiliar singlets before the race is over.
The Open Women also include many names familiar to fans of Colorado cross country. Scanning down the list, there should be a hint of recognition at names like Kristen (McGlynn) Arendt, Stephanie Bylander, Shannon Payne, Rachel Gioscia-Ryan, Erin Kelly, Ellie Keyser, Katherine Ward, Jenny Simpson (that name should come with an exclamation point behind it), Kara Lubieniecki, and probably a few more I'm just too slow to pick up on at the moment.
For the Open Men, you may recognize names like Brent Vaughn, Josh Eberly, Daniel Castle, Ben Payne, Jeremy Freed, Matt Williams, Clint Wells, Justin Weinmeister, Ben Zywicki, Kenyon Neuman, Mack McLain, and William Scoggins. And, I'm just certain I've missed some names in that list. These names accompany a nice roster of national talent headlined by the presence of Chris Derrick.
Cross country nostalgia sessions simply don't get much better than this, and the racing shouldn't be too bad either.
Forecasted conditions appear to be close to ideal for Saturday, with the possibility of a few breezes in the morning, but nothing that will blow anyone off course all the way to Lafayette.
