Runners prepare for Sept. 1 meet

By Sam Waller

The Albany Lions cross country runners are progressing with their preseason workouts as they prepare for their first meet of the season.

“We’re slowly working our way up to the race distances we’re going to be running,” coach Tate Thompson said. “We’ve been doing more segment training, hills and things like that, instead of just running miles and miles. We’re trying to build up their endurance right now, trying to get ready to compete at this first meet.”

Albany runners will open their season Sept. 1 at Haskell.

“We’ll be taking three runners,” Thompson said. “I’ve got four working out and three will be going to meets.”

Thompson said the high school runners will be joined by junior high athletes, who could not begin practice until the start of classes.

“With school starting, we’ll find out what kids we’ll have,” he said. “I’ve already heard of a few that are running. Once we find that out, we’ll know kind of how many we’ll be taking.”

Thompson said the runners will have a lighter schedule this season with four meets before district competition.

“We’re going to do it a little different this year,” he said. “There will be a couple of weeks where we’ll run back-to-back weeks and some where we’ll take a week off, just kind of reevaluate, redo their training and rest their bodies a little bit.” 

Thompson said that the team would not be running a meet every single week. 

The date for the District 10-2A meet, which will be run at Anson, is still to be determined as coaches work around a number of scheduling conflicts.

“The fall or any time  of year in 2A is mayhem,” Thompson said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on. We thought we had a district date set but found out the nationwide practice SAT was going to be that day.” 

Thompson said the date affected about three schools, so the district will go back the drawing board and see when the meet can be scheduled before district certification, which is Oct. 16.