Notes
XC Nationals 2016 in Louisville at EP Tom Sawyer park. partially cloudy with a temp of low-mid 40's with high wind. Team won with 60pts over 2nd place SUNY-GEN with 204 so we set the new national record for largest margin of victory (144- was previously 131 by diz's team in 2009). individually, I PR'd by 11 seconds from my regionals time from last year at saukie and ran a 16 second season PR from last week at oshkosh. I finished 24th place so also got my first of hopefully many more All-American honors. Our team went 9,15,18,19,24,48, and 95. Our 1-5 split was 12 seconds and our 2-5 split was 6.5 seconds haha. We fucking raped. We started in box 42 far on the right side. we got out pretty hard but kept a good line towards the first bend and we were able to establish great position for ourselves. we settled pretty well (i was somewhere in the 50-60s around the mile with al near me and dhruvil right ahead of us). al and i yo-yo'd with each other for the 2 loops and then he made a move up to dhruvil before the 3 mile that i didnt see. i was already passing people anyway so i elected not to make a definitive move. by the 5k i was hearing that i was around 40th place (numbers were all over the place but in the 40s). i continued to move up one guy at a time and when i hit a mile to go i was probably right around 35th. i looked ahead at the 4mile and saw ethan, dhruvil, and al in a line and we were all passing people so i knew for sure even at that point that we were going to win easily. we all passed a lot of people at the end. I ended up passing several people after the last turn, especially the last 150 meters because some guy tried outkicking me and i realized i still had another gear that i havent used since july probably so i turned into that and got 4 more guys right before the end. Overall, the race went like we planned. we got good position, we stayed patient, we let everyone else do the work since the wind was pretty bad (20mph average with 40mph gusts), and our part 3 and 4 were the best in the field. Words cannot describe how proud i am to be part of this team that collectively turned around our fortune from last years shitty finish to this years phenomenal finish. we surpassed our expectations-we knew we were pretty damn good, but none of us thought we would set a national record- regardless of how shitty all the other teams ran. we controlled the race from the start and none of us cared about individual accolades. we stayed in the process, bought into the team, and everything else came as an added bonus and as a reward for the hard work we've put in the whole last year so that we could achieve our collective goal. Nothing is given, and everything is earned. winning felt great but I know that I'm still hungry for more so you better fucking bet on us the next couple of years