
The Comets took to the highly competitive Stanford Invitational on Saturday, September 26th to compete against some of the best runners in the State. Only Varsity teams compete at the prestigious invite. The team was looking to use the fast 5k race over the flat Stanford Golf Course,as a means of preparing themselves for fast paced races down the road. The end result was nearly every Comet runner, running the fastest mile pace of their career for a Cross Country race of any distance.
The Boys Varsity team once again demonstrated their dramatic improvement, running over 6 minutes faster as a team than they did last year at the same meet. The best performance was from team captain Hector Ramirez who ran 17:35. Hector had only ever once run under 6 minute mile pace for an official Cross Country race, and that was at his first league meet of the season where he clocked 5:59 pace. At Stanford however, Hector ran 5:40 pace for 5k distance. He was closely followed by Nathan Bernardo who ran 17:39, 5:42 mile pace. Inteus Castro-Lopez was the 3rd boy in, at 18:11, with a mile pace of 5:52. This gives the Comets 3 boys much faster than last year’s best runner at Stanford, when Karan Singh lead the team in 18:33. Gustavo Aguilera and Azael Zamora completed the team’s scorers, in 18:45 and 18:58 respectively. Gustavo Parra took a big step forward in his recovery, running 19:05, for a mile pace of 6:09. He had never before run under 6:30 pace. Jesse Chircop finished the team’s day by running 19:20 as the 7th man. This is after last year’s 3rd best runner was Hector in 19:19.
On the girl’s side, Arlet Miranda lead the group in 23:37 treating the race as a tempo run, she nonetheless earned the 5th spot in the school’s all time list for the Stanford invite. Andrea Ortiz was next in 24:23, running under 24 minutes for 3 miles for the first time en route. Raquel Rodriguez ran 24:50, 8:01 pace after never having run under 8:30 pace before. Daisy Nava finished the teams day in a solid 25:12, 8:08 pace, compared to her previous best pace of 8:17.
The team looks ahead to the Watermelon run next week, and the Artichoke Invitational in Half Moon Bay next Saturday where even faster paces are sure to come.