Last year's Longmont 3200 Elite field comes off of turn one. Some have graduated, two are far, far away, but several will be back. Photo by Alan Versaw.
The bad news for the Longmont Invitational Elite 3200 fields is brief: Paul Roberts and Eric Hamer won't be there.
To be sure, Paul Roberts and Eric Hamer will be squaring off this weekend, just half-way around the world in China. That would be World Cross Country.
The stakes are a little smaller, but still consequential, for the young men and women assembling at Everly-Montgomery Field in Longmont Saturday morning for 3200 meter showdowns.
The 22 young women stepping to the starting line include three from Niwot (Boettiger, Cranny, and McCaffrey), three from Palmer Ridge (Capek, Furst, and Croft), two from Castle View (McKinney and Dalton), two from The Classical Academy (Mullen and Williams), two from Loveland (Brent and Ritschard), two from Poudre (Warling and Slater), and one each from Pomona (Kennedy), Fairview (Leader), Longmont (O'Malley), Lyons (Tucker), Arvada West (Rawe-Thomas), Summit (Boyd), Rocky Mountain (Doner), and Berthoud (Leonard).
Look for lots of sub-12 marks out of this field in the cool of the morning.
The 20 young men taking on the same challenge include three from Palmer Ridge (Cox, Rudnicki, and Herebic), three from Pomona (Laguera, Mason, and Franssen), two from Lyons (Dillon, Such), two from GJ Central (Lanzl and Leblow), two from Castle View (Barton and Freeman), and one each from Berthoud (Spitz), Boulder (Caldwell), Fairview (Cates), The Classical Academy (Norman), Arvada West (Horen), Rocky Mountain (Hird), Loveland (Quere), Poudre (Hodges), and Erie (Mathis).
Boys finishing over 10 minutes should be the exception rather than the rule. And, that boisterous round of applause you just heard came from the guy reading the FinishLynx images--no sorting out of lapped runners to contend with!
Once the 3200 festivities wrap up, the temperatures start to climb, the wind stays calm, and a full-blown invitational meet rolls off the infield and onto the track. If your team is taking the weekend off, Longmont is a fabulous place to take a meet. And, as most of you already know, Mark Roberts, Kevin Akers, and company run a very tight ship of a meet.