Almost as soon as Cerake Geberkidane ran his 14:46 at the Arvada West Invitational on September 20, nearly breaking Adam Goucher's Colorado all-time boys 5K cross country record, a partner question arose.
What is the Colorado all-time girls 5K cross country record? After all, with Elise Cranny on the loose, that one had to be in danger as well.
Pretty sure that I knew who held the record--even if I didn't know what the record was--I contacted Melody Fairchild. She told me that, if her memory was serving her correctly, she ran a 16:36 at the Pueblo Central Invitational in 1990. That one raised my eyebrows a little as the time was a little better than her 1990 Foot Locker time of 16:39 (still the record, incidentally, on the Balboa Park course. It was also better than her best state meet mark of 16:45 from the Pueblo course in 1989.
The state meet moved to a much slower course at Boulder's Viele Lake Park for Fairchild's senior year. She ran 17:43 to win by a margin of 2:23 on that course. That 1990 margin of victory still stands as the largest-ever margin of victory for any classification and either gender in a state meet race since Colorado went to 5K in 1981. It is likely the largest state meet margin of victory for any distance since shorter races would tend to have smaller margins of victory.
For those curious, Melody Fairchild never ran Liberty Bell, and the Liberty Bell times of her era were no faster than the Pueblo Central Invitational times. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Pueblo Central Invitational was the cross country invitational for Colorado high schools.
As you should have already anticipated, I'm going to tell you a little about the weather that day. Morning temperatures in Pueblo on September 29, 1990, were stuck in the mid 50s. That, and the .02 inch of precipitation suggest that the clouds hung in all morning, creating very comfortable racing conditions. Barometric pressure remained around 30.2 all morning (very good, but not exceptional, conditions for oxygen density). In short, it was the kind of day where someone like Fairchild could easily have set an all-time record on a load of adrenaline. And, clearly, she did.
A visit to the downtown Colorado Springs library this morning failed to turn up a microfilm of the Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News for Sunday, September 30, 1990, but it did turn up a microfilm of the Gazette Telegraph (now simply the Gazette) newspaper from that morning. In the article below, we see it confirmed that Fairchild's memory is serving her correctly. She did, indeed, run a 16:36, though the signficance of that mark was apparently lost on the reporter who wrote the article. I have reproduced the Gazette Telegraph article from that morning. If someone has access to a Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News microfilm from that date and can send me a digital copy of their article(s), I will add those below as well.
Maybe what's most amazing about the record is that Fairchild showed up in Pueblo that morning hoping to run 16:15:
Colorado's all-time fastest boys XC 5K
State cross country results, 1977 - 1997