The PAUSATF Cross Country Grand Prix is building towards the season finale, having completed 6 of 8 regular meets. This week's meet is at Shoreline Park in Mountain View.
Saturday, October 24, the Asics Aggies will host the seventh meet in the series, at Shoreline Park in Mountain View. The following Saturday Tamalpa will host the final meet of the regular season at a new location in the Marin Headlands. The Grand Prix concludes on November 22, in Golden Gate Park with the PAUSATF Cross Country Championships.
This will be the twelfth year the Aggies have hosted the Shoreline Open, with a 5k race for women that begins at 9:00am and a 4.6 mile race for men that begins at 9:45am. The courses wind over gentle hills, loop a portion of the Shoreline Golf Course and return to the hills to finish. Most of the course is gravel and dirt trails with some blacktop sections. The start heads uphill and the finish provides a downhill slope for an all-out sprint.
For the Open Men, Jonathan Charlesworth is currently leading the individual standings, and his West Valley Track Club is leading the team standings.
Kierann Smith of the Impalas has raced at each of the first six meets this season, placing high enough to be second in the Open Women's standings. She has led her Impala teammates to the top place in the team standings. The current leader in the Open Women's standings belongs to Jennifer Derego of the Aggies.
The Aggies hold onto a tenuous lead in the Masters Men division, with the resurgent Empire team close on their heels. A possible match challenge is in the making between the leading runners from these two teams, with Chris Schille (Aggies), the winner of the first three meets this season, against Ty Strange (Empire), the winner of the most recent three meets. Besides their three individual victories each, Schille has taken one second, Strange one third, providing Schille with the top place in the standings by the margin of difference between a second and third place score.
One big question in the minds of local followers is whether or not Linda Somers Smith will be on hand to challenge for the lead in the women's race. Since Smith is an Aggie, and this is an Aggie hosted event, the likelihood is high. Interestingly, if Smith runs and wins, she will claim the lead in the Open Women's standings but she would not take over the lead in the Masters Women's standings from Christine Kennedy. Kennedy, who will be in Ireland for the Dublin Marathon this Monday, is not expected to race again until the Championships, so Smith could achieve first in the standings by running both of the final two regular season events. Marin, the site of the final meet, represents considerable travel time from the San Luis Obispo area where Smith resides, so their is plenty of room for speculation on this point.
I recently reported that David Piazza of WVJS, by virtue of his third place finish at Willow Hills, would replace Tom O'Reilly (Tamalpa) atop the Senior Men's standings. My calculations were not correct and O'Reilly still holds onto the lead by a few points over Piazza. O'Reilly will almost certainly hold onto the lead for at least one more week, with his Tamalpa teammate, Brian Pilcher, expected to return from his journeys to take the top Senior spot in this weekend's race.
Tamalpa holds a slight lead in the Masters Women and Seniors Men team standings, with a more convincing lead in the Seniors Women and both the Men and Women's Super-Senior Teams. West Valley Joggers and Striders lead in the Veteran Men's team standings.
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