What I think that I think.

Here's your 1,000% certified W-preview of the 2010 West Virginia State XC Meet. Like always, there won't be any real predictions but remember to turn up the tunes! (Some tunes are slightly NSFW, for naughty language reasons.)


10:00 am -- AA-A Boys

On the individual side, there's two Shaffers and a Woodford who seem to have somewhat seperated themselves from the rest of the state. On the team side, it looks like it's a fight between Grafton, St. Mary's and maybe Phillip Barbour. But, this is AA-A boys. If anything over the past couple years, AA-A boys has been chaos. Those three individuals could win, someone out of the field could win, those three teams could win, some group of dudes could come out of the sticks and 15 point the state. I don't know and neither does anyone else. I miss the old predictable days of Ravenswood dominance, where no one had to care about point totals because we all knew the outcome. This race will be fun, just remember to buy a program beforehand. I guarantee you'll need to use it.

10:45 -- AA-A Girls

This looks like it'll be the Philip Barbour show on the team side of things. While they've got the girls up front to run away with this thing, it only takes one bad race to let Scott and others slip by. But, all eyes are going to be on...

HARRIS v. MCCAULEY... cage match! The girl who can run forever versus the girl with an incredibly explosive kick. The immovable object versus the unstoppable force. Yin versus Yang. Water versus Fire. Spikes versus trail shoes. Defending champ Maggie Drazba will be protecting her title and has the firepower to do so, but it'll take an upset at this point to get by both the favorites.

1:00 -- The Main Event

There's going to be three intense battles within this race: Individual title, the last All-State spot and the team title. Individually, this will be a race that will go down in WV distance running lore. It's far to close to call, but the winner will certainly come out of the Big Four of Burcham, Cody, Dayton, and Doughty. How this will play out is a complete and total mystery. Each of these runners are fully-trained and apparently healthy. There will be no excuses and no rankings or polls to fall back on. The winner will be better than the other three, period. If you want to step onto the track with a shot a victory, the price of admission is going to be sub-5min/mi pace. Good luck.

The last All-State spot will be a wild finish. If you consider that the Big Four will almost certainly take four All-State spots and E. Graff-Salmons will likely take two more, all of a sudden you have the rest of the state running for only four places! Born-StobbeBrown-Schwarzenberg were within one second at NCACs. Waugh-Campbell-Harmon-King were within 13 seconds at MSAC. I expect these seven, and a few more, to merge into a monster third chase pack. There's going to be ten to twelve guys trying to squeeze into those four spots and not everyone is going to fit.

In the team title, everyone seems to have annointed Cabell Midland as the 2010 champions. I think they're the favorites but that the race is much closer than most people are saying. Jefferson has an outside chance on a normal day, but can close the projected gap very quickly with only one person running an above-average race. The State Meet can be a very strange place, and as Mark Twain said, “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

1:45 -- AAA Girls

This should end up being your convential WV State Meet race. A prohibitive favorite (Propst), the rest of the field in a long string behind her, and a couple teams fighting it out for the team title. The only thing that could beat Propst is something unforeseen: an injury, a fall, someone who runs out of their mind, ect. It would be an upset, to put it mildly.

The field behind Propst is pretty murky. Scherich and Phillips are obviously having great seasons and there's a slew of ladies only a few strides behind them. Really, everything from 2nd place to last place is up for grabs. There will certainly be some unexpected finishes and a top-15 dominated by freshmen...

The team title will have dozens of parents counting finishers and crunching numbers as if their lives depended on it. UHS and Preston are incredibly close, seperated by only 2 points at NCACs. Only those two teams can win because no one else has a chance against the Mon/Preston powerhouses, right? Well, Hampshire seems to have been taking notes from another Eastern Panhandle team last year... I smell an ambush. It'll be a wild ride and the top three teams will probably be seperated by less than ten points.

There you go, that should be all the major players. The typical best viewing strategy is to watch the start, climb the hill behind the track to the one mile/two mile marks, then run back down the hill and catch the finish. Things to watch for that could make or break races: Grafton's #5 guy v. St. Mary's #5, where is Scott's #5 girl, how hard can Harris take the first mile out, where is Jefferson's #5 guy, are Cabell's #4 and#5 guys in the top-15, can the other three break Doughty by 2mi, and how far up the field is the Hampsire girls' pack located. The weather looks beautiful and it should be a great day of racing.

Good luck to everyone... you're gonna need it.