Throw up caked the finish line on Saturday, October 10, at the AHS cross country team’s home meet, the Chris Severy Invitational, which is one of the hardest courses of the season.

The AHS cross country team ran against around 20 teams along the Nordic track looping through the Upper and Lower Moore fields. Girls’ varsity came out victorious with Nina Beidleman and Mckenna Woodrow placing in the top 25.

Beidleman came in 20th with a time of 25.55.5 and Woodrow came in 25th with a time of 26.41.8. The winning runner from Telluride High School, Soleil Gaylord, finished in 22.14.7. Because this course is significantly more difficult than the other courses throughout the season, the times of all the runners are about 5 minutes slower than usual.

“It’s just a lot of uphill and downhill so you’re constantly going up and down. Most other races are golf courses or just flat ground so they’re a lot faster,” Woodrow said.

This was one of the last meets before Regionals, which will decide which teams continue on to States. It is a goal of the team to get the varsity girls to States and this meet was a perfect opportunity to see where they are compared to other runners. Even though the girls did not have one of their varsity runners, Tierney Sutton, due to illness, they are still hoping the results from the race put them in a good place to run competitively at Regionals.

One of the team’s goals this season is to get the girls to states and to do that they must qualify in the top five at Regionals. The girls finished 7th at the Chris Severy Invitational.

They are spending every day practicing, varying from intense speed days on Mondays and Wednesdays to easier distance practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Specific workouts include form drills, which consist of working on muscle memory and getting the motion of running correct.

The team is hoping their chances of getting the girls to States are good, and with the girls making it every year for the past three years there is a lot of pressure on this group of runners. Even though the team is working hard to achieve their goal they also make it clear how much fun they have and how close the players are.

“The running community is really amazing” junior Dara Schenck said. “We all love Chris, we love all our coaches.”

The team’s average times typically range from 20-22 minutes for the girls and 18-20 minutes for the boys. The team is not the top competitor in all their meets but coming from a small 3A school they see this as an achievement.

“We do pretty well as 3A school and overall because we’re a small team so we have a smaller pool to pull from,” Schenck said.