Northfield Mountain

Time: 77:00
Distance: 11 mi.

I headed up to Northfield Mountain for a run and to watch the Western Massachusetts High School Cross Country Championships, which has taken place there for decades. I had enough time to get in 45 minutes of running before catching the guys for their 2+ mile warmup and then I tacked on a few more minutes before the race started. The beginning of my run was basically straight up the mountain, so while it was slow I was working pretty hard. It felt good, though, and despite being misty it was a beautiful morning up there on the cross country ski trails. Even the hills didn't seem to get my hamstring too badly, which was nice--I think I'm making some progress on it even while building up the mileage again. During the race I ran about a mile to watch from a few different places, but I managed to stay off the hilly section of the first mile of the course.

The Amherst guys ran well and captured the win, which was the first back-to-back win since we won every Western Mass title between 1998 and 2002 and secured Amherst with eight titles in the last 10 years. The guys ran under control to save themselves for next week's state meet at Franklin Park in Boston and still came away with just 40 points, beating next-up Northampton by 42. For more, check out the full results at CoolRunning.

And for shits and giggles, here's a picture from the 2001 Western Mass meet (taken by Alison Wade), where we scored a near-perfect 17 points before capturing the state title the next week:

James Dietz, Matt Lacey, me and Ian Marcus (left to right)