Palo Alto High School boys’ cross-country placed 11th at Central park on Sept. 27, 2011.

The usual varsity squad ran in the second heat in an attempt to give them a rest after a hard race at the Stanford Invitational last Saturday.  Taking their place were runners Sam Mignot (’14), William Hall (’12), Kevin Lavelle (’13), Simon Fox (’13), Sam Asin (’12), Nick Forlenza (’12), Matan Geller (’13), David Lim (’12) and Thaddeus Claassen (’12).  Mignot placed first for Paly with an overall placing of 56 and a time of 13 minutes 26.1 seconds.  Following him and placing for Paly were Hall, Lavelle, Fox, and Asin with times of 13:30.4, 13:47.2, 14:00.5 and 14:08.8.

The race took place in Central Park in Santa Clara and part of the race goes across and around middle and elementary school athletic fields as well as across entrances to parking lots and through small gates in chain link fences.  About 200 meters into the race, the entire field of runners must funnel through a gate about 10 feet wide, forcing people to sprint out or be surrounded and stuck.

“Everyone goes out really fast at the start and then everyone dies,” Asin said.

Even though the usual varsity squad was supposed to take this race easy, Paly’s top runner Nikolai Solgaard (’12) ran the 2.3 mile race in 13:03.3 followed by Sam Carilli (’12), Ben Hawthorne (’13), Ben May (’13), Justin Zhang (’13), Nathan Hechtman (’13) and James Hirsh (’12).  Solgaard placed first in the race by over eight seconds, and the rest of the team was close behind with Carilli in fifth place with a time of 13:17.7, Hawthorne and May placed seventh and eighth with times of 13:18.7 and 13:20.4, and Zhang in 10th with a time of 13:23.2.  With these times, Paly easily placed first in the race with 31 points and a team time of one hour, six minutes and 23.3 seconds, ahead of Homestead who had a team score of 64 and time of 1:08:32.7.

The Vikings’ next race will be Thursday, Oct. 6 at Crystal Springs.