XC at the FlatRock Invitational

 On Saturday the girls raced down in Carmel at the Flat Rock Invitational.  

This would be our first experience running at this particular invite because in the past, we would run up at New Prairie in preparation for the Semi-State course.  Now, since our post season has been changed around and they not only eliminated Semi-state completely, but the Tigers will now run at the New Haven  Regionals instead of New Prairie, there wasn't a reason to run the New Prairie invite anymore and the team headed south instead.   It was an early morning for all of us as the girls had to be at the school around 5:30 a.m. and Noel, Nolan and I left our house around 6:45 in order to get there in time to watch the boys race, which went at 9:00.  Our varsity girls would run at 9:30 and then Melayna would run the JV race at 11:30.

The Flat Rock Invitation is a 5K course that is hosted by a large church in Carmel so after we were parked in the church parking lot, we walked across the campus and found other parents around the course.  We got there in time to hear the National Anthem and to see the unique fly-over that had been arranged.  The weather was perfect, it was an absolutely gorgeous day, and the course is known for being fast so we were looking forward to a great day.

And they're off!  Delta currently has the fastest ranked runner in the state with our lead runner ranking 4th currently.  They both ran new PR's and proved that this was indeed a fast course.

After they ran past the crowd at the beginning of the race, we went to another part of the course where we were told that we would be able to see them three more times as the course just went in a large loop and then smaller loops several times before heading off towards the finish.  (Neither Marissa nor Melayna were fans of the "never ending" loops because it seemed as if the race would never end.  LOL)

When Marissa passed by us, she was looking strong again and was running in the third position overall for our team.

And then the second time she passed, she  had gone through the large crowd and was able to stride out a bit more and have room for herself to move around.  Her times were still looking good.

After she passed us the second time, we would quickly make our way towards the finish line where you didn't see them until they came over a hill and ran downhill all the way to the finish line.  The winner won with a blazing new course record of 17:02 and Marissa also ran a new PR once again with a time of 19:49!

Congratulations Marissa on moving up on the Sub 20 board

There were a couple of other divisions before Melayna was set to race, so while Noel walked along the course to see what it was like back in the woods, Nolan and I went over to the church's fitness area and he played and got out some extra energy for about an hour.

Then it was time for the JV race and Melayna's turn to run.  The JV team had a quick huddle before the start and then they were off.  Once again, we headed back over to the place high up on the course so we could see them as they ran past us a couple of times.

I love how Melayna seems to be the only one looking at the camera...and that smile!

Melayna didn't like the course and didn't feel like she ran well, but she still finished the day with a two  second PR and a new time to beat of 23:43.

That's enough to make us all celebrate!!

Almost all of the varsity girls ran new PR with several JV runners also besting their previous times and our varsity girls placed 7th out of 20 teams.  (We will compete against 18 of them again at the state meet if we advance to state so the coaches were definitely encouraged by the performance).

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When we got home from the meet, one of the other moms said that she had been taking pictures of the senior runners all season long but had forgotten to give pictures of  Marissa to me previously so she sent a few pictures over to me.  Since I don't know the specific meets that they are from, I'll just post all of them here in no specific order: