LaBrie Top Class C Runner in Missoula

Whitewater’s High School XC team completed in Missoula last Saturday in the Mountain West Classic XC meet. This is probably the state’s largest high school XC event bringing in over 3,000 runners throughout the day. These teams consisted of not only Montana teams but Idaho and Washington as well. It is pretty intimidating stepping up to a line of around 500 athletes in one race and knowing you're going to have to battle for your position in the first mile of the race. It’s a whole different aspect of racing that we just don’t ever have to deal with at our other meets.

We were only able to bring one Penguin, Shelbi LaBrie, as our other runners were dealing with sickness or prior engagements. Shelbi was the 4th race of the day, starting at 11:45 AM. She stepped up to the line with 407 other varsity girls. She managed to be given the absolute last lane on the starting line, 75. Making up ground in the first 400 meters was her first job, which also forced her to run a lot further than the athletes who received middle and inner corner lanes. She did a good job of making it to the upper portion of the top half of runners. It was hard for coaches to see their athletes with so many spectators on the course, so I was unable to even yell at her until mile two. But, she did come into mile one at 6:45, which was slower than she had initially planned. With so many runners, she ended up boxed in for over half of the course, finally coming out of it around mile two, coming down the monster hill that is placed just at the end of mile two. There were a lot of elbows flying this first half of the race trying to gain position without losing pace. Her second mile came in around 6:50, quite a ways behind her planned splits. She managed to make up all of this time in the third mile with a 6:00 split, cutting her time down to 20:06, a season record by 49 seconds. She ended in 34th place overall, and 1st place for Class C. It was one of the best experiences she could get before heading to the state meet in three weeks. This will be the same course that the kids run on when they head to Missoula for state, so we can go into it with fewer nerves knowing she’s run it once already this year.

I’m hoping to have all three runners back this week to head to Lockwood for the Pride Land Invite this Thursday, October 3rd. This will be a new course for all of us and will be fun to see how the kids do. Good luck to all of our local athletes this upcoming week!