X Country
Monday, September 17, 2007
This weekend I made a trip up to Sparta, Mich., for Sparta High School's annual Cross Country Meet. Conner decided to pick up Cross Country this year and started running for the first time back in August. It was pretty wild, with more than 2,000 runners across all divisions throughout the day.
Grand Rapids Christian Middle competed in Division I for middle schools and finished first as a team. The top GRCMS kid finished 6th, with a whole pack of his teammates finishing right behind him to cement the victory for the school. Conner did great for his second-ever meet (the first being a smaller meet on our home course last week) finishing middle of the pack (49th out of 95 runners) with a time of about 11:30 over a mile and a half.
I never did X-Country when I went to high school in Canada. I don't think I had the build for it (or is that just an excuse?) Anyway, I was blown away by the huge crowds at this meet and have been told some of the meets to come are even bigger. Running is huge in high school and the Grand Rapids area in particular. Calvin College locally has been winning national championships in NCAA Division III, and Grand Valley State University won last year in NCAA Division II.
Some of our product focus shifts in the past few years really feed into that, with XS Sports Nutrition and Nutrilite products that optimize nutrition to prepare bodies for competition. That's the point behind Team Nutrilite, which recently announced new athlete endorsers Sanya Richards and Jenn Stuczynski from the U.S., joining 100m World Record Holder Asafa Powell and 110m hurdles World Record Holder Liu Xiang.
Kind of makes me wanna go out and run. Maybe at lunch today ... a quick 5K (well, not that quick).