Weekend Quick Hits

I'll come back with a longer article later, but I wanted to take an opportunity to make note of a few things that may (or may not) have escaped your attention from this weekend.

• Air Academy's boys straight-up ran with Cherry Creek and Arapahoe on Friday at the Arapahoe Invitational. Much has been made of the AA girls, but the boys are this year's emerging story. New coach, and about-to-be Adams State Hall of Fame inductee, Chuck Schwartz has things coming along very nicely. Palmer Ridge is still the team to beat, but Air Academy is definitely in the hunt.
• They got too much recent rain in Delta to run this weekend's debut edition of the Devil's Thumb Hill Climb. In general, it's good news when Delta gets rain, but it stinks to lose a meet.
• Tyler Scholl ran 17:11 in the Waneka Classic 5K a little over an hour before the high school races began at the Centaurus Invitational. Judging by some of the cheering going on around the course, I think it's highly likely there were a couple other high schoolers in that race who might be seen representing their schools later in the season.
• Speaking of citizens races, I'm wondering if that was the Alicia Nelson who won the womens division of the citizens race at the Lake County Invitational. 21:13 is not a bad time at all for that course. She probably would have beaten all the men had there been a steeple barrier or two.
• I'm still trying to wrap my head around how the varsity girls race ran (subjectively) so much faster than the varsity boys race at the Colorado State/Frontier Academy meet on Friday. I'm taking clues.
• After expressing my puzzlement over the slowness of the times at the Ponderosa, I got a couple of takers. Possible explanations include rough surface (that's happened before at Salisbury Park), and simultaneous races on the course that created some zigging, zagging, and weaving. From personal experience, I can say it's exceptionally difficult to keep two simultaneous races on a course from conflicting unless your course is a simple single loop. The Ponderosa course is not a simple single loop.
• It was a nice showdown between cross-county boys teams Boulder and Silver Creek at Friday's running of the Horizon Invitational. I'll have more to say about that in the weekend in review piece (hopefully later today). 
• Anyone hoping for a down year for Lyons boys cross country might be advised to find less mythical exercises of their intellect. It's not happening this year. More about that soon as well.
• Max Martinez took a 20-second win on his home course. Those 4A teams pointed there for regionals who didn't take an opportunity to visit that course missed a great learning opportunity. And, make no mistake, this course has a sharp learning curve. In about 20 minutes you can learn a whole lot of course strategy there, but those same 20 minutes were your window of opportunity.
• Ted Leblow took his Grand Junction Central Warriors to Monticello, Utah, for a three-mile race at 7200 feet. The boys came back winners, with a nice new course record for Jared Leblow. Telluride couldn't quite come away as winners on the girls side scoring five, but Soleil Gaylord did post a course record and Maya Ordonez was back wearing Miner colors. In all, it was a good day for the Colorado set. It is, however, beginning to look like Telluride will be running without Larkin Brodie and Esme Fahnestock this fall. Alyssa Pack is coming along nicely in the #3 slot, but the margin of error probably isn't what we once thought it was.
• If the 4A Girls state meet was held on the Beaver Creek Ski Area course, I'm pretty sure Battle Mountain would have things in the bag.
• Greeley West traveled to sunny Gering, Nebraska, this weekend for a little cross-cultural cross country experience. Evidently, there is some draw to a cross country meet in Gering that I'm not picking up on, because teams came from far and wide to run in this meet.