V14 N. 56 Cross Country on a Beach? Are You Serious?

 

The following story has been purloined from the pages of the Texas A&M Corpus Christi  Athletics site.

I put this here because I have never heard of a cross country meet being held on a beach, but by jove here it is.   

I did hear of a one hour decathlon on a beach from old friend Phil Scott when he was in San Diego.

Imagine doing all ten events in the sand within an hour.

 The Islanders men's team got a perfect 15 against Texas State Rio Grande Valley in their home opener.   

The women's team came up against a tougher foe in SMU as well as Rio Grande Valley.    

The second reason I put this in today's blog is the granddaughter of my former Oklahoma teammate Walt 

Mizell ,  Micah Mizell ran her first varsity race for the Islanders and was their #3 finishing in tenth place. 

In the day when the original sport of cross country has been primarily taken out of the country and put on 

golf courses in America, Texas A&M CC has gone to the local terrain and put it on the beach.  It seems that 

timing of the start is important when beach racing as the tide seems to be out in the photos and some hard 

sand is available to the runners.  I only wonder why none of the runners seem to be barefoot.  Reminds me 

a bit of the pictures of John Walker on the Kiwi beaches in the 1970's.    George

From TA&MCC website:

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Starting off the season in the sand, the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi men's and women's cross country teams hosted the Opener at the Seashore Friday morning and got off on the right foot at the National Seashore.
 
In similar fashion to last season, sophomore Mathayo Kiptoo Bundotich won his race in the men's 6k with a 19:32.87 team as A&M-Corpus Christi's top five times crossed first consecutively going head-to-head with UTRGV.
 
Bundotich's time ranks him sixth all-time in the program record book for the men's 6k.
 
Newcomer Landon Blankenship crossed second, clocking a 19:42.19 time. Senior Emil Hajjaj followed with a 19:44.58 time in the third place, while newcomers Ewan Wheelwright and Diego Canto rounded out the top-five to secure the perfect score, with UTRGV's first runner not crossing the finish until after the 20-minute mark.
 

 
The women also raced against UTRGV as well as regionally ranked SMU.  Freshman Alicia Finnis was the Islanders' top finisher in her collegiate debut, finishing third in the women's 4k with a 14:26.55 time.

 
She makes a mark already on the program, as her time in the women's 4k ranks her seventh all-time in school history.
 

Sophomore Deandra Ibarra ran a ninth-place finish in the opener with a 15:20.38 while newcomer Micah Mizell closed out the top-10 clocking a 15:22.39 as the women's top-three finishers.

See Comments below for an eyewitness account:

                      Post Race Celebration for 15 Point Perfect Score.   Any Sharks in the Water?

                                       A few more pictures from this unique university:

                                        I'm sure they have a hurricane evacuation plan.

                                                       Interesting Classrooms  

                 American Literature Class:   Reliving Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea"

                                                               Commuting to Class

                                              Seriously,  I want to go to grad school here.

Comment from Grandpa Walter who witnessed this race.

Actually  Padre Island made a pretty good cross country course—an out-and-back trek, which they ran twice. Runners were free to find the surface they wanted, as long as they went through the chutes at each end. Spectators were able to see the runners at mid-course as well as start and finish. I didn’t hear my grand-daughter complain about the surface, or any of the other runners for that matter. 

Padre Island has to be the absolute flattest XC course in the world!  Not a foot of rise from start to end! Well, maybe tied for the flattest with every other beach in the world that’s runnable.(Is that a word?)

I guess some runners could have veered  off to get closer to the water and thereby create  a small uphill to get back onto the track used by the pack, but otherwise you could test your bubble level on it. 

Except for the fact that this race was an odd distance, I can see a runner trying for a PR there. Zero altitude gain. Fairly good surface; no hills. And a rare Corpus Christi day with no wind!  The only thing that could make runners  faster would be a favorable wind that changed directions 180 degrees every time they made their three u-turns. 

George, you remember those days we ran from Norman down to the Canadian River bottom on those longer runs. And how flat that river bottom was once we got on it.   This was just like that, except it had a bunch of water on one side, and the Canadian River bottom rarely had any water to speak  of, just miles and miles of that red Oklahoma sand. 

Seeing her run that first college race reminded me of that first college race I ran, a dual meet against Kansas on the “old golf course” in Norman.  Lee Smith and I were the only two to break into the KU line-up and prevent a sweep.  But I didn’t know that then, all I knew was that a bunch of KU runners beat me, and two of them had cheated right in front of me  by cutting across on one of the tight curves on the course.  It was a surprise (and kinda disappointing) to me to see them do that. But it didn’t affect the outcome; I wasn’t going to catch either  of them no matter whether they  stayed on course or not.

But I digress. . .

Hope you are doing well, and keep up the great work with the blog!

Walt

Other comments:

In reference to the mixed drink 'Sex on the Beach'.  vs. XC on a Beach

I've had "sex in a pan". Wonderful desert    Mike Waters, Corvallis, OR. I DID THE FIRST, (Sex on the Beach)  NEVER THE SECOND (XC on the Beach). - JT    I think he is referring to the drink S.O.B.  not the other.  ed. George, A couple of comments on the recent Once Upon a Time in the Vest.Not on the beach, but  very near the beach: UCSB Lagoon course.  I ran the course once (a week after the Santa  Barbara Marathon); it is a beautiful course.  I wonder if they still have that XC course.   Just a bit of separation from the beach.  I used to live 3.5 miles from campus, and I ran to  and from my apartment every day.  When the tide was out I ran most of those 3.5 miles on  the beach.  One time I counted over 100 dead squids on my run in.Jerry Siebert.   I was a grad student at Cornell in chemistry and our building linked with the physics  building.  Jerry was a postdoc at the time and I used to see him in his lab.  In those days  many of the physics grad students and professors ran at noon time and were part of the  Finger Lakes Running Club.  It is curious that Jerry never joined us.  Apparently, he had his  fill of running.  One of our running partners was David Lee, who won the Nobel Prize  after I graduated. Don Betowski UF Gators used to start season with a beach run (race?) Bruce Kritzler I coached the St. Joseph's High School cross-country team of Alameda, California in 1963.   We used a local park bordering the beach.  Half the course was on the beach and the other  half in the park.  In leaving the beach area, the competitors had to climb a wall.    The students seemed to really like this aspect of it.  Only wimps didn't like it.   See photo attached.   That's Bill Fairwell, my top runner, in the photo.  He went on to win the league championship at  Bellarmine.  Mike Tymn   Mike Tymn      Mike, I remember those Converse shoes. Was there sand at the bottom of the  wall in case they fell off? George,   Yes, there was sand below and the wall wasn't as high as it seems to look in the  photo. I'd estimate about 6 and a half feet, but the cross bar they grabbed onto  was only about six feet from the sand.    None of the competitors had trouble jumping to  the cross-bar to get over it.  The beach was on San Francisco Bay.   They ran on the  shore for most of it, but about 100 yards of it was in beach sand.     The championship race won by Fairwell was on the day Kennedy  was assassinated.  There was much confusion as to whether  the race would be called off, but they decided to go ahead with it.     Mike George,   An additional thought.  Prior to the running boom, I don't think most road runners cared about  times.  It was all about place or at least doing it faster than the preceding year.    Courses weremeasured with car odometers and usually short of the advertised distance, but many were odd distances, such as 5.5 miles or 7.6 miles, etc.    I recall races in which the best guys ran in a pack for the first half of the race and  didn't really start running until the last half of the race. It was more  so like that in the marathon.    Mike George, Have done a lot of beach running, having coached at UNCWilmington and College of Coastal GA.  SE USA beaches are great for running at low tide, with firm, flat sand similar to dirt roads.  High tide not so good, as beach shrinks and sand is much softer. In the heat of summer, there is always a breeze on the beach (nothing to block the wind?)  and usually feels 10 degrees cooler than running inland. Bruce Kritzler Loved your piece on the XC beach race.  Nice college as well.    This reminded me of the Sauble Beach Relays, an intrasquad meet held at the end of a week's training at Sauble  Beach, Ontario from 1969-74.  We ranked everyone from top to bottom, then assigned teams for the shuttle relays,  upand down the beach for a distance of two miles per leg.  Setting up the teams was always intense and the  Relays themselves provided bragging rights the entire cross country season. Trotwood Madison HS northwest of Dayton, Ohio,  pre-season cross country camp.   Bill Schnier coached there in 1974. How many of you old coaches took your teams 350-400 miles across an international border  to pre-season back then?  Bill went  on to coach at U. of  Cincinnati for over thirty years. Ed.                      Harvey Woodard  Sauble Beach 1974                                    Sauble Beach             Sauble Beach winning relay team 1974                        Judy and Steve Price timing Harvey Woodard and                                                                                                                     Gary Lowe            Lake Huron- Sauble Beach from above                                                       ....and ground level From L.J. Cohen George, great to see my home town, Corpus Christi, mentioned in your blog. We have a very unique race  run in May each year. It’s called Beach to Bay. It’s a 26.2 mile  marathon with 6 man relay teams starting  in the sand on Padre Island and finishing on our bay front. It attracts over 2,000 teams along with some  individuals running a solo marathon. Here’s a link should any of your readers want to put a team together  and run Beach to Bay.  https://beachtobayrelay.com/about/the-race/ Amazing how many responses this post about a dual and triangular cross country meet has created.   Maybe when it crossesthe International Dateline we'll get some responses from the Kiwi's and Aussies.   Put down your pints of Foster's,  lads,  and get back to the office and have your Sheilah type it up for you.  Ed.