The Week Ahead In Colorado Cross Country


This week is the week where every high school cross country team in the state determines if they turn uniforms in or if they survive to race another week.

All that's left of this week is the Wiggins Invitational. While that's a fairly high-profile meet yet to be completed, it pales against the scope of what's coming next week.

Things start off comparatively low-key next week with the Overland FR/SO Championships on Monday. This meet has proven itself a solid draw over the years and will wrap up the season for a lot of younger cross country runners in the Denver metro area. Count on seeing results from this meet; reporting is typically very good with this meet.

The week, and especially the earlier part of the week, is also dotted extensively with JV-type meets (not necessarily limited to freshmen and sophomores) for those athletes who are not part of the regional meet picture for their respective schools. A lot of these meets fly under the media (and official timing) radar, but I do expect to see results from some. Any results received in a usable format will be posted.

By CHSAA rule, these JV culminating meets may not take place on the same day and venue as the regional meet for that program. Consequently, we'll see most of these meets happening on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Because it's on Thursday that the big business of the week gets going.

That big business is, of course, regional qualifying meets.

Almost all regional meets now take place on Thursday. The exceptions to that are two Western Slope regionals (2A Region 4 and 3A Region 1) taking place in Delta on Friday, and I believe that 3A Region 5 is still slated for Stenger Soccer Complex in Arvada for Friday. Everything else happens on Thursday. 

That makes Thursday a very big, and very meaningful, day of cross country action here in Colorado. Leading up to Thursday, I'll be doing as many regional preview pieces as I can wedge in. It will not, however, be possible to include a preview for every region. Those preview pieces will be premium content pieces and will include a virtual meet analysis, much like this week's league meet previews did. 

Saturday, of course, is a huge day in Colorado cross country. It's not high school cross country, but it does showcase a lot of young people who will be the future movers and shakers of high school cross country. We are, of course, talking about the Colorado Middle School Cross Country Championships at Fehringer Park next to D'Evelyn High School.

I'll be there, and I'll have a coverage crew with me to capture as much of the action as we can.

Doing previews for middle school state is way more difficult than it looks. Unlike high school, we don't get anything like even reporting of meet results around the state for middle school cross country. That means we can expect several surprises on Saturday--athletes almost nobody outside of their home communities has heard about. 

And, even for the athletes we have heard about, there's simply no standard middle school race distance here in Colorado. Some meets run 1.5 miles, some 2500 meters, some 3000 meters, some 3200 meters, some two miles, some 4000 meters, even some 5000 meters, and then there are some other odd distances.

If you're a MileSplit Pro member or Flo Universal member, you can go to the MileSplit Virtual Meets tool to sort out virtual meet results by each of these distances. If not, you can sign up now and gain access to virtual meets and all the other premium content available on Colorado Track XC.

It's a lengthy process to step through all the possible distances for virtual meets, but you can learn a lot about who most of the top competitors figure to be if you take the time to do that.

Here's a quick course in how to do that for those who haven't done it before:

1. Click on Rankings from the main navigation bar at the top of the page.

2. Select Virtual Meets, then select Use Upcoming Meet.

3. You now come to the screen where you Choose Filters and Settings. Pick either MS Boys or MS Girls, as your immediate needs indicate. Season and Year should already be set to what you want. You probably want to leave Grade as All, but you can certainly narrow things down to 8th, 7th, or 6th graders. Leave State alone. Event is where things get tricky. 3000 meters is the "standard" event distance, but you can select any of a range of event distances from the dropdown menu. I'd avoid use of the 1.x and 2.x distances as they include races of varying odd lengths and so any virtual meets you get from those two buckets won't be based on a consistent distance. Anyhow, select the distance you want (and you're certainly free to go back and use a different distance later), and then click on the Next button. 

4. Now find Colorado Middle School State Cross Country Championships from the list of possible meets and select it. This will bring up all the teams with athletes registered for the meet. Then click on Next. This brings up a virtual meet for the middle school state meet based on all the times in the database for the distance and gender you've selected. You can, of course, go back and change the gender and/or the distance. 

As I indicated before, this could become a lengthy process, but if you stick with it, you'll eventually have a very good idea of who (most of) the top contenders, both team and individual, for Saturday's meet will be.