The Hawks Fly Through Another Fast Race

Saturday was another great race day for the Delta Hawks, with both the girl’s and boy’s teams finishing second in the club race!  So many great performances, it may take some time to summarize, but here goes nothing…

The first amazing fact: this was the team’s second race of the season at the 1.5-mile distance – and everyone who ran the first (Lagoon Valley) matched or improved their time.  Check out the progress:
Charlie – 7 seconds
Tahlia – 14 seconds
Adeleine – 17 seconds
Ryko – 22 seconds
Matthew – 23 seconds
Natalie – 25 seconds
Lou – 27 seconds
Jack – 53 seconds
Nate – 1 minute, 38 seconds!
That is such a great testament to our training plan and our toughness!  As Coach Phil points out, talent is a baseline, but training and toughness are from where improvement comes and the proof is in the faster finishing times and medals earned.  Let’s keep it up!

While all our athletes had great races this weekend, a few performances warrant special note.  First, Harper Farris, who joined the team mid-season, really ran wild. One month ago at the first SRA meet, Harper ran 9:21 mile pace, while at Flat SAC she turned in a 7:52-pace effort on a longer course!  That is incredible, and we hope to see more from her moving forward.  Both Sophie and McKenna had huge improvements in their race paces this weekend as well.

On the boy’s side, Mason finished his second race of the season and improved his race pace by more than a minute per mile, from 9:02 to 7:41!  We also want to give another special shout out to Nate, as he has continually improved his pace meet after meet and moved up in position on the team.  He is a paragon of the benefit of putting in the work and showing up for every practice ready to work. 

Sadly, the end of our regular season is visible on the horizon.  Looking ahead, we are participating in the Clarksburg Country Run on November 14th, followed by our last regular meet of the season – the USATF Pacific Association Championships in Folsom on Sunday, November 21st.  The Association Championship meet is going to be a great chance for all our athletes to really shine, as we will be running in age group races against the best club runners from the Bay Area, Northern California and Nevada.  We can’t wait to see what the culmination of a hard-fought season will bring!

As always, great job Hawks, and let’s keep on flying!

Coach Eric

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