Summer cross country training sets tone for season

Sneakers pound across the dusty trail and a forest musk fills the air as the group of 10 circles around Donner Lake, 230 miles from Saratoga High. The runners pause to draw in gasping breaths and soothe their burning legs, but it doesn’t take long before they’re battling uphill again. The real sightseeing can wait until they finish their training run.

This summer, senior captains Andrew Harter, Steven Sum and Rohith Krishna and juniors Stephen Law and Kevin Duong-Le of the boys’ varsity cross country team spent five days in Lake Tahoe, staying in Harter’s summer home and running with students from local Truckee High School. The boys completed altitude training in the mountains by running seven to eight miles in the morning and then three to four more miles in the evening.

“Usually the morning runs were hard and hilly, and the evening ones were easy,” Harter said. “The point was so that when we got back to Saratoga it would feel a lot easier when we ran at the low altitude.”

The five boys, in addition to the rest of the boys’ varsity team, trained intensively over the summer with a schedule that their coach Dan Ambrico suggested. The group ran approximately 15 miles during the first week and added five to 10 miles each week until they each reached their personal limits suggested by the coach, which ranged from 45 to 65 miles.

The boys’ grueling hours of dedicated running paid off at the 3-mile Early Bird Invitational at Toro Park on Sept. 6, and at the 2.1-mile Lynbrook Center Meet at Lynbrook High School on Sept. 9.

At the Early Bird meet, freshman Amit Nag ranked 17th with a time of 18:12, sophomore Nick Sum ranked 15th with a time of 17:28, junior Stephen Law ranked 12th with a time of 16:38 and senior Steven Sum finished first with a time of 15:26 in their respective grades.

At the Lynbrook meet, freshman Amit Nag ranked third with a time of 11:54, sophomore Joel Schneidmiller ranked fourth with a time of 12:02 and sophomore Kushagro Bhattacharjee ranked fifth with a time of 12:04 in their respective grades.

As a result of his intensive summer training, Steven Sum felt confident going into the race.

“I thought that with this bigger base, I’d just be more successful,” Sum said. “I’d put in all the work and I believe in good preparation and training, so [winning was] not a huge surprise, but it’s nice to be recognized and get first.”

Sum and Ambrico agreed before the race that the emphasis was not on winning, but on gauging Sum’s progress after the summer so that he would be able to win more important races, such as the Stanford Invitational and Foot Locker Cross Country Championships West Regional, later in the season.

“I just wanted to go out there and see what I could do because I wasn’t really sure where I was at, and luckily it worked out well,” Sum said. “I was pretty happy. It’s my senior year, it’s a good start to the season and it shows that I’m definitely going to be able to do a lot better this year.”

The girls’ team also kicked off the year with a solid start. Of the seven girls from Saratoga who competed in the optional Early Bird meet, junior Ashley Chen ran a 23:25, setting a new personal record, and sophomore Alice Bian ran a 23:37. At the Lynbrook meet, junior Kimberly Chen finished fourth with a time of 14:14 and freshman Allison Borch ranked fifth with a time of 14:23 in their respective grades.

The girls’ team coach Danny Moon was especially pleased with the Early Bird results because only Chen had run it before.

“It was great to see the younger athletes get out there and just charge on it and have a good time,” Moon said.

The girls held optional team practices once or twice every  week during the summer, although some girls ran individually. Moon believes that even the smallest amount of summer training can lead to improvement, but he does not require girls to run over the summer.

“There will always be athletes who wait for the season to start running,” Moon said. “But if you want to run, you will run.”

Due to printing deadlines, the Sept. 23 meet at Central Park could not be covered. The teams will compete on Oct. 2 at Crystal Springs and on Oct. 7 they host a meet that includes Lynbrook High School and Prospect High School.