Follow the top overall distance runner in the State of Maine, Bonny Eagle junior Kialeigh Marston as she embarks on her second season of cross-country. Marston was the Class A State Champion last fall in her first xc season, she returns as the heavy favorite to repeat.
Hello! I don’t know about you guys but I’m not liking this whole changing of the seasons thing. I much rather have summer all year, even though I tend to run much better in the cold. I kicked off my season the other day at TA. I had never ran a 5k there before; the last time I raced there at all was last year at the relay meet. The course was nice and flat, which I found a little boring. The down and back was nice though because I was able to see how my teammates were doing throughout the race. With the course getting really boring it was hard to get my head in the game, and my times seemed to suffer a little from that. It was a great start to my season and look forward to racing hard soon.
It seems so weird that it is only the start of regular cross country season; it feels like cross has been going on forever at this point. I really don’t mind, because cross country by far is my favorite season. I am a better track runner then cross country, but I find that Cross Country is more fun. It seems like xc is less stressful and way more interesting. The people tend to be more friendly it seems: “cross country: the only sport where you can elbow someone and they will say sorry.” Adding on to the fact that I tend to get most of my mileage on trails during this season which is awesome and makes workouts way more exciting. The less impact tend to help with recovery between running and the ushall running related injuries.
My school recently closed our trail for a couple weeks; what they were doing to our trails were unknown to the masses. When we were finally able to use our trails again and to our surprise the school completely renovated our trails. They doubled the width of our trail, took out the many rocks, laid down dirt, and completely flattened it out. We were amazed that they did all of this work for the Cross Country team. Our course is now super safe and poised to host some fast times.
My teammates ran at Massabesic last week, It looked like a good race. The course seemed to be very hard with many hills and opportunities to trip. Many of my teammates were able to pr on such a hard course which was awesome to watch. The course itself was on an apple orchard, very scenic, very Maine.
Two weeks from now is FOC, best meet of the year. The environment of the meet is so much fun, the music, the many races, make for a great day. A ton of my coworkers that I haven’t been able to see since the ending of work will be there and it will definitely be nice to see all of them. The competition level at Festival is heightened with runners from other classes which is always fun. I don’t even mind it is the same day as our Homecoming; who needs homecoming when you have FOC?
Cheerio Kialeigh Marston
