NACAC X-C

Weekend Racing--Dylan at NACAC X-C

This week, some racing to report on—Dylan’s sojourn to Jacksonville, FLA with the national X-C squad—and the first of a series of profiles on P-K athletes (see the next section below), which I think will be of interest to current members of the group in particular.

Dylan traveled with a full national team contingent to Florida this past weekend to compete at the North American, Central American, and Caribbean Athletic Association Championships. Participation at this event was meant to be a kind of dry run (dry being the operative word for an X-C race in South Florida at this time of year!) for the World Championships in Amman, Jordan at the end of the month. This championship is a relatively new one, and has been dominated, as it was again this year, by teams from the U.S. and Canada.


A midday start insured that the Senior Men’s race would be a warm one, with the temperature peaking in the low 80F range. The race started at a moderate pace before a U.S. runner made an early attempt to steal the race. Breaking alone from a chase group that included several of his Canadian teammates, Dylan caught the early leader before half way and proceeded to lead the race himself. Noticing that he was the lone red vest with four U.S. runners in tow, he settled into the group and let the Americans control the pace, hoping for strong final km to claim the championship. However, when eventual winner, American Stephen Pifer, initiated a strong push after 5k, Dylan found himself unable to cover and was forced to settle for 2nd, with the other Americans 5-20 seconds adrift in places 3 through 5. Despite feeling strong a fit during the race, Dylan felt the heat may have cost him in the final 10mins, and said he felt unwell for the rest of the day. It’s no secret to those of us who have been training at these latitudes this particular winter that conditions have not been optimal for preparing for fast race in the Floridian spring! All things considered, Dylan is well now placed to enter the next phase of his program, which will consist of a couple of more weeks of heavy sledding (figurative only, we’re hoping) here in Kingston before heading to California for the first of what we hope will be a series of 5 and 10k track races, also in California in late April/early May (much will depend on the results of this first race, as a mentioned in an earlier post). After this first race, Dylan will head to Flagstaff, Arizona for 5 weeks of warm weather/altitude training, during which he will be living and training with several other Canadians also aiming for fast track times in California. During his time in the desert, I will ask Dylan to send some posts, and perhaps some pictures, to include in this blog.