BrHS Summer XC Camp

I had a few open days and took advantage by spending some time helping out at the BrHS XC camp up at Golden Gate Park.  It is a great little part of their summer program where the kids get to run at 9100 feet (ish), get in some serious hills, contemplate what they really want to accomplish this season, further bond as a team, and focus on running.

The Vaughn family came up as guest speakers.  Brent was US XC champ, holds the 5k school record at CU (13:18), and the all classification record for the 3200 in CO as a high schooler.  He ran with Greg as his coach at Smokey Hill HS.  Sara was an All American at CU, and was recently 7th at the 1500 at the OT just 10 months after having their most recent child.

Very cool to have pro runners come up and chat with the kids about training, competition, team work and discipline.

The kids got in several runs and I joined them.  I was pretty sore from Burro Days and kept most of it easy.  But to some extent there was no easy given the vert and the elevation at this location.

The camp ended in a nice little relay competition for the kids, where the teams were picked by the coaches, mixing the top talent and upper classmen with some of the younger and less fast kids.  The coaches put their own squad together for a bit of the fun as well.  Each team had to pick how they were going to attack six 1 mile loops with the rules being that regardless of how it was divided up (miles, 800s, 400s, whatever), that each kid had to do 1.5 miles of work.  This gave me a little bit of quality, and actually it helped blow out some of the kruft and soreness I had.  Still – with the hills and the altitude – nothing was really that fast.

Here is a shot of JZ leading out a 27:40 10k guy.