Guts

Like I said previously part of the appeal of cross country is the intense team spirit, however, what also makes cross country great is watching gutsy performances. I personally believe it takes much more guts to run 5000m of hills and grassy, rocky stretches rather than pounding out 800m on the track. And this is coming from an 800 guy. So real quick I thought I'd talk about some of the gutsiest runners I have seen in cross country and then you can post up some of your own. I'll take all of the nominees and put them in a poll that we can vote on to determine the "Gutsiest runner" of PA XC. So here's what I got.

Mark Dennin- The 2007 State Champion upset Chris Aldrich and Vince McNally by hammering the pace for all 5000m of the race at Hershey. He ended up winning by one of the largest margins in recent years and carried the wave of momentum into fantastic performances at the Mid States meet, the Northeast Regional (2nd), and the Footlocker Championships (13th I believe). That final race, Footlocker, he mixed it up with the likes of German Fernandez, Luke Puskedra, Mike Fout, Chris Derrick, Rob Finnerty, and Donn Cabral.

Ben Furcht- Ben may not have had the build of a typical distance runner, but he put in the mileage and dropped time like a rock. Around 19 minutes as a freshman and nearly sub 15 as a senior, Furcht dropped serious time moving up from in the 50s at states to 11th. He could have even been higher, but after being boxed for a full mile he spent too much in the second mile surging for the lead and went from 3rd to 11th in the final 400m. Furcht also made the trip to Footlocker's Championships.

Jason Weller- Weller ended up being slammed by Paul Springer at Lehigh just a week before states despite unleashing a 14:54. Although most people were picking against him, Weller ran a brutal pace at the state course and managed to drop Springer and win the state championship. It was the clutchest performance I had seen .... up until he topped it in the 3200m again against Springer.

Dustin Wilson- Hasn't had quite the chance to showcase his stuff the way the other guys might have, but Wilson works very hard to put in enough mileage to reach a high level in the 5000m and it has helped be one of the top independent league runners ever since he first stepped on the scene.

Jim Spisak- Spisak took out the pace through the mile in just about every race he was in, some of them being extremely stacked fields like the Carlisle invite. He ran his race and wasn't afraid to shoot for the moon and merely land amongst the stars.

I've given you some of mine now give me some of yours and hopefully we can put together a cool, fun poll.