September 7, 1979 (Friday)

From running log:
Cross country practice. Ran 1 mile warmup, 3.5 mile workout, and 0.5 mile cooldown (5 miles) on the River Road on a cool, breezy 72F day. Nice easy pre-race run. Eight man varsity tomorrow: Hegley-McGann-Crary-Queniahan-Nelson-Kelly-Toman-Nikl. Hip and knee sore, whirlpooled them. Hope to do well tomorrow in the Verona Invitational, goal is to finish in the top 10.

30 years later:
For the 1979 season, we considered the Verona Invitational to be the first real cross country meet. Unlike the USTFF meet the week before where runners had been divided into heats depending on their year in school, at Verona we'd be running as a team against other teams. Typically, a cross country varsity team is made up of 7 runners, the first 5 of whom score for the team. Verona was allowing 8-man teams, a nice touch.

Cross country scoring couldn't be much simpler. Your place is your score, and lowest score wins. In a 5-man scoring race, the best possible score is 1+2+3+4+5 = 15 points. That kind of team dominance is rare, of course. Typically, runners are scattered throughout the field and coaches are exhorting each and every one of them to pass the guy in front. Every place counts, every runner passed could mean the difference between your team winning or losing the race. The only complicating factor is that after your first 5 have scored, the other 2 or 3 don't count towards the team score. That is, if you sixth finisher was in 50th place, he'd get credit for that finish, but the next guy behind him would get the 50 points toward his team's score (instead of 51), assuming he was one of his team's top five. Keeps things fair.

After and up-and-down summer of worry over just who would be on this team, I was feeling pretty good about this 8-man lineup. Baraboo High School did have a couple of other good runners who were not on the team, but no use fretting over what wasn't going to be (one was the starting quarterback on the football team so you couldn't blame him, the other was just not interested in running at all, unfortunately). Still, I felt that this team could be strong enough to win that coveted SCC crown that we sought, that we'd made our goal many months before. We'd see how we would fare against some very stiff competition the next day.