The annual trip to Bozeman, MT for the Montana State Invite has always been fun for a variety of reasons. The meet serves as a great opportunity to improve against teams we know (many of whom we ran against two weeks ago) from our region and state. The weather is usually cooler and more Fall like (45 degrees/ptly cloudy/breezy at race time)...true cross country weather so to speak. The trip up and back includes some of the most beautiful scenery in the country as we drive through Yellowstone Park and along the Gallatin River. It's our own live version of "Field and Stream" magazine. Another one of my personal favorite pieces of this trip is stopping at Ernie's, a local eatery in West Yellowstone, MT. Donna serves up some of the best french toast anywhere. However, they only serve it until 11am each day. So if your going to arrive later in the day call ahead and have them make you an order to eat upon your afternoon arrival.
Once again we ran all freshmen and sophomores against a field including teams with a great deal more experience than us. However, I thought our top four runners (three freshmen and a sophomore) ran extremely well. They had only a 20 second spread between them. We ran into a bit of bad luck as another one our freshmen suffered a calf strain and could not finish. She was running with our 3-4 runners (Rebekah Winterton and Alexis Laws) who were 18th and 23rd, respectively. Our top two (Nikki Dotter and Jenny McCune) were just outside the top ten in 13th and 15th. Our fifth (Chantel Hunt) and sixth (Brooke Casagranda) runners did everything they could to fill that final scoring position as best they could after AuraLea went down.
We're off to our first real big (30+ teams) invitational next weekend at Stanford. We will add sophomores Amanda Mergaert and Megan Combe back into the lineup. Our fifth year senior and top runner, Alyssa Abbott, also hopes to see action. She was nursing an IT Band this week so her status is still a little iffy. Hopefully, AuraLea's calf will cooperate and we can be at full strength.
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