Maybe not most, but a very large portion of Colorado Springs and Pueblo were there. Throw in Canon City and Lyons and you have yourselves a meet.
As ugly hot as the weather has been to start the season, conditions were downright pleasant (not ideal, but definitely pleasant for this meet). Clouds came in for the afternoon, blocking out the sun for a couple of hours and dropping plenty of cool where 90s had been the norm of late.
The sun returned for the races, but the cooling had already done its work. A light breeze and temperatures in the 70s prevailed.
Not necessarily by design, Erik Nelson had 25 schools for his meet (as a note here, putting a meet on your MileSplit calendar is most definitely not the same as registering for the meet--always contact the school first). But, the races went off without a hitch. There might have been a hitch, but Labor Day weekend traffic just did allow Lyons to arrive in time to come to the starting line--four hours after leaving home.
This isn't the same Colorado many of us grew up in. But, the cross country is better than when we grew up, so we put up with it.
The course doesn't look all that intimidating, but it is not one to be taken lightly. You go up and you go down, sometimes shorter and sometimes longer. When you get to the finish line, you know you've run a race. It probably ranks somewhere near the middle of Colorado courses in terms of speed and difficulty.
More advanced runners handle the speed part of the challenge better than more novice runners. A lot of runners who posted more middling sort of times at this meet will figure out variable pacing sometime during the season and run a lot closer to the front later in September and October.
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