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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 19, 2016)
10A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2016 Challenge: Man-made ‘Mud Pit’ is cross-country event’s highlight Continued from Page 1A When asked which sport is the more grueling, Seaside’s Jackson Januik said, “This is,” refer- ring to cross country, one of four sports that the senior letters in. “Soccer is tough and you get out of breath, but those hills and the wind … after a race, I just feel like I’m gonna puke every time.” Soccer teammate Hunter Thompson also says, “probably cross country. I’ve gotten used to soc- cer. This is deinitely harder. You don’t get any breaks. In soccer, you can stop running a little.” The Seaside boys also happen to be the defend- ing state champions in cross country, so they obvi- ously take their sport(s) seriously. A runner continues his race despite miss- ing a shoe after the mud pit during the 3-Course-Challenge on Saturday at Camp Rilea in Warrenton. Rankings They certainly did Saturday, as Januik inished ifth (out of 441 runners!) in his race on the Easy course. He took third last year. Thompson was 20th, and in between, Astoria’s Lucas Caruana placed seventh. Elsewhere, Seaside’s Bradley Rzewnicki was second out of 429 competitors on the Dificult course. “I was hoping to get top ive,” Caruana said. “I tried to catch Jackson, but every time we hit a hill, him and that kid in the neon would blast through it.” The race gets physical sometimes, he said, as runners jostle for position, “but if you get out quick enough, you don’t have to worry about that. You just get out quick in that irst lat mile before all the hills, because it’s pretty hard to change posi- tion after that.” And as the name implies, all three courses (Easy, Moderate and Dificult) have challenges. Mud pits, sand, trees, numerous signs of elk … and runners had to deal with strong head winds Saturday. “There was a head wind once we came out of the mud pit,” Januik said. “The woods and trees kind of blocked the wind, but you could still feel it. The home stretch, it’s so open that the wind just comes right at you. It felt like it took forever to get here.” But, the runners seem to love it. They wouldn’t be out there if they didn’t. Photos by Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian ABOVE: Cross-country runners compete during the 3-Course-Challenge on Saturday at Camp Rilea in Warrenton. BELOW: High school competitors in the boys easy course race sprint through a mud pit during the 3-Course-Challenge on Saturday at Camp Rilea in Warrenton. Competitors catch their breath af- ter completing their race during the 3-Course-Challenge on Saturday at Camp Rilea in Warrenton. A Kentlake High School in Washington cross-country runner stumbles in a mud pit during the 3-Course-Challenge on Sat- urday at Camp Rilea in Warrenton. Mud pit The “Mud Pit” (it’s man-made) is the high- light of the 3-Course Challenge, so much so that it’s capitalized. Photographers, fans and other runners gather at the pit just to watch athletes trying to slog their way through (and hopefully fall!) in the mix of water, sand and muck. Many runners lose their shoes going through the pit. “There’s two pits now,” said Seaside coach Neil Branson, who runs the whole 3-Course Chal- lenge show, with a lot of volunteer help. “The main one we’ve had, and the rain last night illed it up a bit more. And there’s one just north of it for the Moderate and Dificult courses. So they get water twice. If you’re going to be out there any- way, what the heck?” Saturday’s inclement weather threw another challenge at the runners, he said. Not that the course itself isn’t a challenge. “With the wind and rain, those kids on the Dif- icult course — that last hill, ‘Elk Hill,’ is a bug- ger,” Branson said. And in cross country, “you can’t call timeouts. It’s crowded, so you have to get position, and you can’t go out too hard. It takes some thinking.” The weather also threatened team tents and canopies, and delayed trafic and parking a little longer than usual. But, Branson said, “people rally. That’s what is so great about this — everybody jumps in and does what they can do. Coaches and kids, they just roll with it. The people at Camp Rilea are so good to us.” Race organizers added a 3,000-meter high school race, in addition to a race for middle-schoolers. Winners of the 3,000 race were Seaside’s Josie Smith and Astoria’s Andrei Gregory. “It was (coach) Frank Januik’s idea, and I think it serves kids better,” Branson said. “Our motto is ‘celebrating the sport of cross country.’ Anything we can do to make it better.” The sport is looking pretty good on the North Coast. A high school cross-country racer runs through a mud pit during the 3-Course-Chal- lenge on Saturday at Camp Rilea in Warrenton. Miracle-Ear Hearing Centers are looking for qualifi ed people to test their latest product, The Miracle-Ear® Mirage for FREE!* Here’s the catch: You must have diffi culty hearing and understanding in background noise, and your hearing must fall in the range of the hearing aid. People that are selected will evaluate Miracle-Ear’s latest advanced digital hearing solution — the Miracle-Ear Open. You will be able to walk in to our offi ce and walk out knowing how much help there is for you. 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