Alamosa's Jericho Ulibarri plays the patience game behind Gage Mayo early in the race. Ulibarri's strategy paid off with a second-place regional finish. Photo by Tim Hilt.
Around 1:45 at the Elwood Golf Course in Pueblo, teams began to claim real estate and set up tents. Runners began to mull around the straightaways, and Frisbees started being tossed between teammates.
During this pre-race revelry, a single runner wearing a maroon track jacket in a hat with a single white “A” embroidered above the bill sat in a start box and placed his elbows on his knees.
Jericho Ulibarri was visualizing. The senior from Alamosa took ten minutes to stare down the mowed fairway that serves as a finish for the regional course. After waiting through a 4A girls race, roughly an hour and seventeen minutes later the images that were seen in Ulibarri’s mind flashed before the eyes of the spectators lining the same fairway.
“I was just wanting to focus and visuali...