Emcee Mark Roberts gets things started at the St. Vrain Invitational, a meet which has rapidly become one of the largest in the state.
A useful reference for those who've been with the sport a while, and an indispensable resource for those new to the sport here in Colorado...
In this primer you will learn almost everything you need to know to be a knowledgeable fan of Colorado high school cross country. Some of the contents are elementary in nature; some border on the arcane. Some of you are new fans and want to understand more of the sport. Others of you have been around since Bill Bowerman was inhaling lethal doses of contact cement while inventing and refining the Nike waffle trainer and merely want to check to make sure I have my facts straight. Hopefully, there’s something here for everyone.
Most especially, I hope you find something that makes you smile. We typically remember better when we enjoy the process.
Scoring
It’s difficult to enjoy a sport if you don’t understand the scoring. Cross country is no exception. That said, some sports are difficult to enjoy even when you do understand the scoring, but there are better places to discuss the foul fests that characterize the final four minutes of most basketball games.
The basics of scoring in cross country are that you run seven in a varsity race (or six in some 3A meets, or five in some 2A meets—including state) and you arrive at a team score by adding the places of your first five runners (four in 3A, three in 2A). Low score wins.
The non-scoring runners are sometimes called “displacers” or “pushers.” Despite the latter name, most are not involved in illicit drug activity. In case of a tie in the standings, the place of the first non-scoring runner (displacer) for each team involved in the tie breaks the tie. This would imply that tie-breakers go poorly for your team does not have any non-scoring runners. In case you were wondering, there is an alternate method of tie breaking when both teams involved have no non-scoring runners. Ask your high school coach to borrow his or her rulebook if you’re interested.
Until 2011, Colorado used a modified method of scoring for state and regional meets. Starting this year, however, you no longer have to learn an alternate method of scoring here in Colorado to understand our state and regional meets. For that you should be thankful.
That's not to say, however, that everything is the same at the regional meets as it is at state meets.
At the state meet, teams run seven athletes (six in 3A, five in 2A--if they have five to run). Five (or four or three) score, and the other two displace.
At the regional meets, however, each team runs nine (eight in 3A, seven in 2A). The first five (or four or three) score, the next two displace, and the last two just run. They're tossed out for team scoring purposes. Nothing personal, it just keeps the team scoring aligned with the accepted standards of the sport if we toss them.
You may wonder, "Why do they run if they're tossed for scoring purposes?" The answer is simple. They run so teams have an opportunity to use this race to give a couple extra people a chance to make a case for being on varsity at state. Since we no longer have JV races at regional meets in Colorado, that can be a pretty important opportunity to have if you're on the bubble for a varsity position.
Terminology
Every sport has specialized terminology. Cross country is no exception, except that cross country has less specialized terminology than most sports.
Assistant Coach - a young, fast guy who can keep up with the kids the head coach can't keep up with any longer.
Carbo Loading – an excuse for the team to have a relatively inexpensive meal together. It’s highly doubtful that carbohydrate loading serves any useful purpose for a 5K race. In fact, it makes many people a little gaseous the following morning.
Chute – a place for runners to hurl while supported in the arms of an adult whose only sin was to volunteer to help out with the meet. It’s usually difficult to get help to volunteer for the chute more than once, especially more than once in the same season. For whatever reason(s), though, some volunteers forget this experience and can be duped into working the chute in subsequent years. There are a few wonderful folks, bless their souls, who don't seem to mind shoving sweaty bodies down the line and dodging vomit no matter how often you ask them.
Core Strength – notoriously absent among individuals who have grown up consumed with eating, texting, and playing video games. The condition is addressed by doing a number of exercises that make athletes feel conspicuously self-conscious. “Okay, everybody, let’s get in the table position and do some fire hydrants!”
Course Map – a photocopied document typically in short supply at meets, worthy of a D+ in a third grade art class, and cleverly designed to confuse both coaches and runners from visiting schools.
Cross Training – postponing the inevitable. Runners who are nursing an injury are often given some sort of non-impact aerobic workout to do for a day or two in hopes that stress reaction won’t turn into a stress fracture. Bicycling, elliptical, swimming, and water running are the workouts of choice. Most high schoolers are very poor water runners, all the more so when doing it without supervision. It takes some practice to do it even close to right. As an aside, never assign bicycling as a cross training workout for an athlete with patellar tendonitis.
Eligibility Check – a pointless administrative exercise for nearly all cross country runners. Cross country is probably the reason CHSAA did away with the Academic State Champions awards, since you could easily have a 3.98 team GPA in cross country and still not win the Academic State Championship. Contrast with __________ (Fill in the name of almost any other sport. Most cross country runners enjoy stellar reputations with their classroom teachers.).
Energy Drink - an overpriced, canned concoction that does not deliver as advertised. A caffeine buzz should never be mistaken for the kind of energy required to run a solid race. In short, drinking one or more of these before a race will make you more annoying, but not any faster. In distance running, there are no shortcuts and there are no magic bullets. But "Magic Bullet" would be a singularly appropriate name for the next energy drink to hit the market. On a more serious note, it is positively unsafe to be drinking even one of these before a race, anecdotal accounts of living to tell the story notwithstanding.
Fartlek – nothing resembling what it sounds like. Fartlek means “speed play” in some Scandinavian tongue. Or at least that’s what we’re told. Trouble is, everyone who’s told me that was either winking or had a uncontrolled movement in their eyelid. The term refers to a run in which runners go faster, then slower, then faster, then slower, and usually mostly slower by the end (unless they’re really fit).
Flats – lighter weight racing shoes, the shoes of choice for most cross country races in Colorado but distinguishable from spikes (see below). Alternate definition: a nightmarish situation for the lead biker (see below).
Games Committee – a group of coaches and school administrators with the unenviable task of arbitrating disputes arising out of meets. Much to the relief of all concerned, appeals are rarely filed or needed in cross country. Be suspicious, however, of anyone volunteering for a games committee assignment.
GPS Watch - a legal pacing aid for runners. By rules of the sport, competitors are not allowed access to "aids" during an event and, over the years, many runners have been disqualified when a coach or teammate not participating in the race has taken a few steps alongside the runner as he/she goes by. If only these unfortunate runners had known about GPS watches!
Hydrating – the act of keeping your body well supplied with liquid, especially during the school day prior to a workout or meet. This activity is crucial to a runner’s well-being, but dangerous to do during a school day where many teachers are reluctant to let students visit the restroom as a matter of routine. Life can be cruel at times.
Intervals – a type of workout typically done at or near race pace. Athletes run a fixed time or distance (usually five minutes or less or one mile or less), recover for a fixed period of time (the “interval”), and repeat until the coach wearies of the process or the sun goes down.
IT Band – the name of choice for a future rock group made up of former distance runners who experience hip or knee pain while walking down stairs, doing squats, and other similar activities.
Jewelry/Adornments - the primary infraction that officials check for at meets. Most visible jewelry is banned, but a diamond-studded watch is not (see also GPS Watch, above). Bobbie pins do not fall under the jewelry rule, but banana clips do.
Lead Biker - some guy with Oakleys and $5000 worth of bicycle, jersey, and assorted cycling gear who enjoys riding his bike over grass, trail, and concrete. Lead bikers have occasionally been known to miss critical turns on the course, so it is advisable to know all the turns of the course in advance.
Minimalism - a bonanza for the running shoe companies. You give them $90, you get very little shoe.
Nike Cross Nationals/Foot Locker Nationals - the Holy Grails of high school cross country. These are national level cross country meets for which places are earned at regional qualifying meets. The sponsoring companies go out of their respective ways to make the participants feel like the rock stars of the running world.
Pack Time – the interval of time between a team’s first and last scoring runners. In some cases, minimizing this time becomes a team's strategy for a meet, a version of “No Child Left Behind” as applied to cross country. It’s fine to have a short pack time if your fifth runner can beat most teams' first runner. Of course, almost any strategy works well in that case. Opinion differs on whether a minimal pack time is good when your fifth runner isn’t that fast. The idea behind focusing on pack time is to “pull along” your last scoring runner. Sometimes it works and more frequently it doesn’t. Sixth and seventh runners are generally left to fend for themselves.
Phenom - a freshman who wins an inordinate number of races.
Recovery Day – a day where you get strength back for an upcoming harder workout. Typically, this means a 30 to 45 minute run. You should be impressed that people can do this much work and still call it “recovery.” It should be noted that "recovery run" does not mean recovering while you're running; it means a run you can fully recover from before the next workout. A few high school runners, and parents, have been known to be confused on this point.
Rules Meeting – the annual preseason convocation of coaches for the purpose of being informed about changes to rules that nobody knew were rules and arguing over interpretations of the uniform rule.
Spikes – lighter weight racing shoes with nasty metal protrusions on the bottom of the shoe. Spikes are rarely worn in Colorado as totally grass surfaces (where the nasty metal protrusions are actually useful for something besides shredding the lower leg of the runner in front of or behind you) are rare in our state. Spikes make an irritating “skritch, skritch, skritch…” sound when running over the hard surfaces that occur at some point on almost all Colorado cross country courses.
Start Box - a kind of virtual holding pen for the runners from one team at the start line. The front of the start box is typically two, but occasionally three, runners wide. This implies that all but the first two or three runners from each team are fighting for clear space at the beginning of each race. The situation, however, is not nearly as bad as what is encountered at many road races where the receding hairline guy with the double-wide stroller and 30 extra pounds takes up squatter's rights at the very front of the field.
Stress Fracture – a season-ending injury and an excuse to wear the fashion accessory of choice for distance runners—a black boot.
Tempo (or Threshold) Run – a run at a comfortably hard pace for a fixed duration of time, usually about 20 minutes. Most high school runners read “comfortably hard” as an oxymoron, a fact which may help to explain why so many struggle with settling into the right pace for this workout.
Trainer - meaning depends on context. "Trainer" can refer either to the all-purpose running shoe that keeps entities like Nike, Brooks, Asics, etc. in the black, or to the quasi-medical person seen by the team member hoping for a waiver from the day’s workout. You can occasionally trigger a nervous tic condition in the quasi-medical person by consistently referring to him/her as the "trainer." The preferred form of address is, "athletic trainer." Get it right, or risk the consequences the next time you need a tape job.
Training Through – an all-purpose excuse for running poorly in a race, as in “I was just training through this race.” Sometimes, it is true, but the rationale seems to be invoked more often than truth would suggest.
Names, Schools, and Meets
Adam Goucher - the consensus pick as the best male cross country runner in state history. Goucher ran for Doherty in the early 1990s. Ultimately, any really good male cross country runner in the state will be compared to Goucher and the comparison will typically end up being unfavorable, especially if the comparison is being done by an older coach. Legends die hard.
Anna Banana Memorial Wildcat Invitational - it takes about as long to say the meet name as it does to run the course at Connected Lakes along the Colorado River in Grand Junction. This is the western slope PR meet of choice.
Battle Mountain Invitational - For those who can't get enough of the Beaver Creek Ski Area during the winter months, there is the Battle Mountain Invitational in September. There are no gondola rides to the top of the course in September, however.
Denver Lutheran/Prairie View/Horizon/Whatever Runners Roost Invitational – the meet that follows Bill Stahl around. It’s also the meet you go to to get wet. It is hosted at Addenbrooke Park in Lakewood on the last Tuesday in September. I get asked a lot about "the meet that has the big water pit." Now you know which one it is.
Fort Collins – a school that has won an extraordinary number of state titles in the running sports and is a permanent fixture at the Nike Cross Nationals girls race. Whether or not this is related to their mascot (Lambkins) is uncertain, but the schools with unusual mascots (Fort Collins, Rocky Ford, and Brush) seem to have strong traditions in cross country. Perhaps taking grief over your school’s mascot makes you faster?
Glen Peterson - the dean of high school cross country coaches in Colorado. Still doing it, still enjoying it, at Air Academy High School.
Lake County – the dynasty against which all other high school cross country programs in Colorado will forever be measured. Lake County has won 29 state championships in cross country (the next two schools on the list have fewer than that combined). Had girls cross country been a CHSAA-sanctioned sport before 1977, the number of Lake County titles might easily have exceeded 40. Most, but not quite all, of these titles came under coaches Dick Anderson and Frank Mencin. The Lake County girls once won seven consecutive state championships. It’s getting more difficult to find people who were part of these programs, but Tim Mondragon (cross country coach at Pueblo Centennial) is one. If you twist his arm hard enough, he will spill a story or two.
Larry Zaragoza - now coaches at Alamosa High School. Zaragoza is the only coach in state history to have won both boys and girls state titles with two different schools. His coaching career is nearing 40 years and he's still on top of his game, owning a first, a second, and a third place team finish in the last three state meets. Impressed? You should be.
Liberty Bell – THE invitational cross country meet each year in Colorado, and also the fountainhead of most of the really good arguments about high school cross country in the state. Is it really a cross country course? Is the course short? Should a coach take his or her team to the meet? If he/she doesn’t, will he/she survive the mutiny of team members that ensues? The meet is run mostly along the Highline Canal in Littleton and is hosted by Heritage High School. Schools come from multiple states to take part in this meet. The start of the Division I races feature more elbows than a good Avs vs. Red Wings game (the start boxes are all of about 3/4 of a runner wide).
Melody Fairchild - still probably the best female cross country runner this state has ever seen and still fast, now 20 years out of Boulder High School.
Wiggins Invitational - The eastern plains PR meet of choice. Mostly a road race hosted for the benefit of league-orphaned programs on the same weekend that all other schools are running their league meets.