19:30 West Noble XC Meet

Today was a large cross country meet at West Noble High School about an hour outside of Fort Wayne. Thirty-two schools were represented and as you can see from this shot at the starting line, it was a madhouse. Jordan is right in the center of this picture, close to the camera. This particular start actually got called back because one of the boys in the middle of the pack got trampled a bit.

The weather today was very cool. The temperature at race time was about 54 degrees but it was great running weather. The course started and ended with an uphill run but was relatively flat. Afterwards, Jordan couldn't stop talking about how much he liked this course and the cooler weather. As usual, he very carefully "paced" himself . . . too carefully it appears to us on the sidelines but, as I told him after the race, we don't know his body like he does. He finished strong, passing several runners on the last stretch and his final time was 19:30. Last year, his PR was 19:11 and he ran a 19:26 at districts. However, today's time was an improvement of a minute over his previous best for this year. I think he finished 116th overall--out of about 220 runners--and second on the Blackhawk team.