Emma's XC Season

10/17/2020

Emma was super excited that she would be able to run in her very first HS XC season. She came into the season with stomach issues and some Achilles pain, but she was able to push through some of it and still made the varsity team. She also struggled during the time trial and so we gave her an inhaler to use during the course of the season. Emma's first meet of her high school career was a very difficult meet at Doherty HS. The course was unfamiliar, had a creek crossing, and the air quality was so bad. Even still, she was excited to race. She came in 3rd for her team which was awesome. Her time was definitely not where she thought it would be, but it just wasn't a course for stellar times. Emma didn't race the 2nd meet to let her Achilles rest and did about the same as the first race during the 3rd and 4th meets. Just as her achilles was getting better, her stomach seemed to be getting worse. It wasn't until the 5th meet at Fountain Creek Regional Park that we started to see Emma improve. She improved her time into the mid 20's and was looking stronger. She maintained that level of performance for the 6th meet as well. The highlight of Emma's season was definitely the 7th meet which was the League Championships. I was so impressed with how Emma ran and finished her race. She was in wave 2 which starts 3 min after the first wave. Emma looked strong the entire race. It was like watching her when she ran at Nationals last year. No Achilles pain and no stomach pain to slow her down. She came in with many of the first wave girls, placed 3rd overall in the League and got a new high-altitude PR of 19:45. 7 out of the top 10 were also girls from her team which was awesome. Her team grabbed the League title this year! Emma tried hard to repeat that race the following week at Regionals, but the weather was so hot, she had just found out that she had asthma for real, and her stomach was in poor shape. It was all she could do to hold on and finish the race. Even though she didn't PR at Regionals, it was the race I was most proud of because of how much heart she had while she was running. She was struggling and she didn't give up. Her team grabbed the title of Regional champions which meant those 6 girls that ran at Regionals qualified for the XC State Championship race. Emma was really hoping to break 20 minutes at State. It was so fun to watch her run with all the best runners at the 5A division in Colorado. She ran a good race on a really tough course. Her team placed 6th overall which is better than their seeded place of 9th. Emma finished in 20:34. This season has definitely had its ups and downs and challenges with stomach problems, Achilles pain and most recently, asthma. But, through all of it Emma persevered and ran incredibly well. As the only Freshman on her team she learned so much from her teammates who are now her good friends!

MEET RESULTS

Meet 1 (Doherty HS) - 21:40.62
Meet 3 (Rampart HS) - 21:50.80
Meet 4 (Norris Penrose Events Center) - 21:00.20
Meet 5 (Fountain Creek Regional Park) - 20:43.75
Meet 6 (Greeley, CO) - 20:28.80
Meet 7 (MVP - League) - 19:45.20
Meet 8 (MVP - Regionals) - 21:17.56
Meet 9 (Norris Penrose Events Center - State) - 20:34.20

MEET #1 - DOHERTY HS