Four Sub-15s on one day, in the same race, and five of the top-23 times nationally?
Yes please.
The boy's Sweepstakes race at the 2022 edition of the Liberty Bell Invitational was identical to my Monday night meal.
Delicious.
The race had all the right elements for a mouth-watering Monday-night treat.
Taco salad.
Editor's Note: Switching Taco Tuesday to Monday gives me a reason to look forward to Mondays. Because come on, Mondays?
There's the crunchy chips, layered evenly with ground beef with additional spice compliments of a McCormick taco packet. Finely shredded mild cheddar cheese sprinkled along with fresh romaine lettuce. And since this race was insanely fast and insanely deep, we'll add some homemade hot salsa made with cilantro, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and homemade jalapeños to top it all off.
The final 100 meters was one wild kick with Fort Collins' Christian Groendyk leading Cherokee Trail's Hunter Strand by a stride. And this race went all the way down to the finish line.
Groendyk claimed his biggest race to date, and it came with a shiny new personal best that also doubled as a school record - a 14:48 clocking.
Likewise Strand had the same - a PR, and a school record, running 14:50.
And the theme continued way beyond the top-two.
Valor Christian's Dane Eike may not have run a school record - that has to be one of the tougher school records to take down in the country - but he did run a Colorado PR of 14:54 to finish fourth.
Four-seconds back Erie's Evan Kraus finished in 14:58 for - you guessed it - a PR, and a school record.
What made this race additionally tasty was the fact that there were additional school records and PRs run.
While Mountain Vista's Benjamin Anderson missed out of the Sub-15 club by the slimmest of margins (.04), he did come away with a Colorado sophomore class record of 15:00 - and we'll revisit this with a bit more context in Wednesday's edition of Colorado Future Stars.
Add that these were the top-five times run in Colorado this season.
And if four runners cracking 15 minutes in Colorado isn't already wild enough, let's take a look at the numbers a bit more...
11 ran 15:10 or faster.
25 ran 15:30 or faster.
58 broke 16 minutes.
I guess this means another serving of taco salad!