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celebrating top performances week after week...</h3>
One grabbed national headlines with a big win on one of the nation's faster courses, the other grinds away on the difficult courses of Southwest Colorado, but keeps winning all the same. Colorado Track XC file photos by Ashley Green and Alan Versaw.
It was likely only a matter of time before Katie Rainsberger was highlighted as an athlete of the week. She’s easily been one of the state’s best talents since starting her high school career two years ago at Air Academy. And this year, we expected nothing different. We all knew she was fast and we all knew she was talented yet last weekend, Rainsberger outdid herself once again and proved she’s entered into an even higher level of performance.
Last Friday, Rainsberger traveled to Casa Grande, Arizona, to compete in the Desert Twilight XC Festival. Home of the new Nike Cross Regionals Southwest course, the meet served as somewhat of a pre-NXR experience, and attracted some big names and fast talent.
As always, Rainsberger was up for the challenge. “I wanted to see if I could go out hard and be able to push the pace,” she explained. “Back in Colorado I would go out hard and my next two miles would feel more like a tempo. I knew I’d have competition there so I wanted to push hard and run fast and race. I wanted a fast time.”
With that goal in mind, Rainsberger pushed the pack through some relentless pacing. Blazing through mile one in 5:17 and mile two in 10:55, she had a few companions, but Rainsberger was a top contender from the beginning. “Dani Jones was always on my shoulder, maybe half a second to a second behind me,” Rainsberger said. “She would come up on my shoulder and then I would surge. It was pretty close, neck and neck, the entire way until the last 50 meters when I put in my final surge.”
Raisnberger outkicked Jones for the win, closing with a 5:05 mile and completing the 5K course in an astounding time of 16:41.
“My mom always says that in order to race well you have to have confidence in your training,” she offered. “I looked back at all my workouts and knew I was ready to do this. It felt rewarding when I saw the time because I knew all my hard work had been leading up to this.” Rainsberger’s time currently sets her as the third fastest girl in the country.
She is clearly one of the best, but what makes Rainsberger’s story even more impressive is the way she’s been able to consistently improve from one high level of talent to another. Running behind another one of the nation’s best, Elise Cranny, was no doubt an inspiration and motivation for continued improvement.
Rainsberger’s approach to training is meticulous and thorough. “It’s steady, consistent training,” she said. “It’s layer built on layer. You don’t want to do one drastic change because that can lead to injury. If you just build layer on layer, stay patient, and work through the workouts but also make sure you’re rewarding yourself, you see the results. Persistence is what I’ve been doing.”
With her junior season now underway in full force, all Rainsberger plans to do is keep up with the hard work and consistency.
“I’m really happy with how everything is going so far and with how well the team is doing, too,” Rainsberger said. “The [Air Academy] girls team has definitely elevated their level of commitment and it’s really helped everybody be more focused. It makes me excited. I have Regionals, State, Nike Cross Regionals and Nike Cross Nationals, just four races left. Now it’s a building period. Now I start working harder and doing longer workouts.”
After this weekend, it’s safe to say that any earlier expectations put on Rainsberger will likely be surpassed. With goals of a faster time the next time around on this course at Nike Cross Regionals and bettering her sixth place finish at Nike Cross Nationals from last year, Rainsberger’s season is shaping up to be nothing short of incredible.
Yet despite the fast times and astonishing victories, as always Rainsberger stays humble and remembers to remind herself of the love she has for this sport. “Above all, I just want to race and keep having fun with it.”
For the boys, Colorado Track XC honors Ro Paschal for his dominating performances at the Montezuma-Cortez Ancient Trails Invitational on Saturday and the Del Norte Invitational on Tuesday. Competing against some tough out-of-state competition in Cortez, Paschal grabbed the victory on the difficult course with a time of 17:46.
“I was going into the race thinking I definitely wanted to break 18 minutes,” Paschal commented. “I improved my time from last year by 40 seconds so I definitely got what I wanted out of it individually. And as a team, we exceeded my expectations. We ended up winning the meet even though we didn’t have our number two guy.”
Winning is a new and exciting experience for the junior from Mancos High School. Walking away with wins from five out of his past six races--and pretty much entirely on more challenging types of courses--it appears that winning is something Paschal just might start getting used to.
“I knew I was coming into the season in much better shape, but I definitely wasn’t counting on winning five races,” he said. “It’s kind of weird because I didn’t even win a race until this year. It’s weird coming into this season and being that guy at the meets who everyone’s like, ‘Oh, that’s that guy’.”
Suffering from a broken foot for the majority of his sophomore season, Paschal’s PR of 17:30 from freshman year still holds. That time looks to be in jeopardy, however, as Paschal will return to the course of his PR in his best shape yet and with hopes of a sub 17 5K.
With strong training under his belt and some wins fueling his determination, Paschal is on a strong upward trajectory. “This year has exceeded my expectations as far as my training and my successes in races,” he said. “I’m definitely enjoying it. This has been by far my favorite season.”
Adding to the excitement of his season, Paschal is also leading one of the top rising teams in the 2A classification. The Mancos boys have won all but two meets this season and came out on top again this weekend against some strong teams.
“We’ve been battling with a school- Monticello from Utah,” Paschal said. “They were our main competition and they’re three-time defending state champions, and we ended up beating them."
Based off of their performance this weekend, Mancos will definitely be ones to watch in the 2A competition at state. “I’m hoping we can do well as a team,” Paschal continued. “Lyons seems a little bit untouchable but we’ve raced against Rocky Ford and almost all the other top ten teams and we fare pretty well against all of them. I guess we’ll see in a few weeks.”
Congratulations to both Katie Rainsberger and Ro Paschal on being honored as the athletes of the week. Best of luck to everyone as we now enter into the league championships!