Lauren Gregory had to back up her brilliant run at NXR-SW with another big race at FLMW one week later to advance to Foot Locker Nationals. Photo by Alan Versaw.
Formal practice for the 2014 Colorado cross country season began on August 11. Four months later, of those who dressed out that day, only Lauren Gregory is left standing.
Gregory's fabulous season comes to a close on Saturday in San Diego's Balboa Park, site of the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championships.
Along the way, Gregory has logged firsts at meets such as Liberty Bell and the Colorado State Cross Country Championships, and a pair of seconds at Nike Cross Regionals - Southwest and Foot Locker Midwest.
And, it's at those last two meets that Gregory's season took a different turn than many of us on the outside looking in might have expected. Fort Collins, after all, has been a fixture at Nike Cross Nationals. So, even though Fort Collins did not qualify a team for NXN this year, when Gregory finished second in Casa Grande, none of us even thought to wonder if she had other plans in mind.
Of course she would go to NXN!
Or not, as it turned out.
"From early this year my coach and I decided to try Foot Locker, and the plan was if our team did not make it to NXN I would turn it [the NXN berth] down... I have never been to Foot Locker and was curious to see what the individual route looked like, and declining Nike would give me a better chance of being rested and ready to go this weekend."
That meant turning down a sure thing for a hope and a dream. It also meant going to Wisconsin the Saturday following Thanksgiving and running another high-stakes qualifier.
It wasn't until late in the race that Gregory was certain she had made it, "I had a fairly good idea at about the two-and-a-half-mile mark, but also you cannot be certain because I had no clue how close 8, 9, and 10 were. All I knew is that I was in a good group, I did not know how many there were in the group. [It was] not till the final straight when I was certain I made it."
She's now had a weekend off to rest and recharge a little before Saturday's big challenge in San Diego. It's a short list of stated goals for this weekend--representing Colorado well and having fun. And a big chunk of Colorado will have the webcast cued up to see how that goes for her. And it's hard to see her missing on either score.
After more than four months of training and racing, plus the summer build-up to the official season, Gregory will take some time down following the Foot Locker race. "I will probably take about 10 days and then cross train for a little to ease back into training, then begin and get prepared for yet another season."
While it's tempting to speculate what "yet another season" might hold, there's the business of finishing the season at hand to be tended to first. Race time is 10:15 AM, MST, on Saturday.
