The Palo Alto High School girls’ cross-country team finished second overall in the Lowell Invitational on a cold and cloudy morning in Golden Gate Park on Saturday.

Captain Susan Heinselman (’11) completed the 2.93 mile course with Paly’s best time, 19:28, earning her a seventh place overall finish.

“The race felt really good,” Heinselman said. “I’ve never ran this race before.”

Natalie Dimits (’11), a student at Livermore High School, earned the top time, finishing in 17:55.

The Lady Vikes felt strong coming in but didn’t expect to place so well. Last year’s effort in the Lowell Invitational was weakened due to a pneumonia-plagued Heinselman.

“Last year I had pneumonia and two years before that I was sick,” Heinselman said.

Former captain Kathleen Higgins (’10) was the biggest loss for the team coming into the season. But coach Paul Jones does not foresee any big problems this year.

“We lost our number one runner from last year [Higgins], but we will be a stronger team this year,” he said. “Leigh [Dairaghi (’11)] is running really well. Gracie [Cain (’11)] didn’t do as well [today], but she had a cold.”

This race was an improvement since last week’s run at Gunn High School.

“For the next race I need to work on pacing myself and hills,” Lydio Guo (’12) said. “I definitely did better than I did last week at Gunn, but I definitely need to learn from my mistakes…I started too fast.”

Guo finished 31st with a time of 20:43.

To add to Heinselman’s seventh place finish, Dairaghi completed the course in 20:11, finishing in 15th place, and Maryssa Sklaroff (’13) secured the 18th place spot with a time of 20:14.

“We beat our expectations,” Jones said. “You never know what the competition is going to be like. When you have 20-plus schools, you never know. We did better than our expectations.”

The Lady Vikes run next at the Stanford Invitiational on Saturday. The top 14 runners from the team will participate.