Top Moment of the Meet (2)
Lauren Gregory bids farewell to Front Range League cross country, twice.
Everyone knew going in this would be Lauren Gregory's final Front Range League cross country meet. She came into the meet with three consecutive wins in the league race and made it clear very soon that there were no other possibilities under consideration for her final attempt. And, though all three of her previous wins were 17-somethings, she outdid them all with a 17:16 this time around.
Even by the half mile, Gregory had established a considerable lead. There were no battles for first, only for second.
Eventually, Claudia Burgess would win the battle for second, overtaking Luna Slater late in the race, but that was better than 90 seconds after Gregory had crossed the line. A first-to-second gap of 92 seconds in this league is almost incomprehensible. And, if we didn't know Lauren Gregory, it probably would be incomprehensible.
The battle for the team title was only slightly more spellbinding than the battle for the individual title.
Broomfield came into the meet as a prohibitive favorite. Everyone at the meet more or less assented to the idea that Broomfield would win once they saw who the Eagles were sending to the starting line.
But, when the gun went off, Broomfield very purposely fell back behind the lead pack. It would be charitable to call the Eagles early pace a threshold pace. Maybe, just maybe, an upset could happen here...
As it turned out, though, Broomfield wasn't much in the mood for that kind of charity. Steadily, the amorphous mass of blue moved its way through the field, passing left here, passing right there, and occasionally enveloping a runner and spitting her out the backside of the blue blob when they were done.
5000 meters later, the start-starting Broomfield pack had risen to 9-11-13-14-15-18-21. Cleary, it was not at all-out effort, but it was only slightly less devastating on account of that. Broomfield's final tally of 62 had Boulder 37 points in arrears.