It's finally here.


No more off-season, pre-season, PRE pre-season; the season itself has finally arrived--cross-country season. No more scouting training camps and time trials; no more wild speculation based on last year, track times, or wishful thinking. From here till November, race results will be the voice of authority.


In Tallahassee, home of Florida's State Meet, the season will open north of town in Phipps Park with Godby Highís Cougar Cross-Country Challenge. Some of the athletes already saw the park two weeks before the September 6 meet when they raced Gulf Winds Track Club's Miller Landing Madness. The course for the Cougar Challenge is entirely different, though. Phipps Park covers 670 acres, all of it networked with trails. You could race a different 5K course in the Park every Saturday from now until the State Meet and there would still be trails you hadn't seen.


Most of Phipps Park is owned by the Northwest Florida Water Management District, which protects the land as part of the watershed for Lake Jackson. Trails go all the way down to the east shore of the lake and climb back up into the Red Hills. It can be a nightmare for flatland runners. One stretch of trail goes uphill for 800 meters. Half of that climb is on the 5K course for the 2014 Cougar Challenge. The terrain alone is justification for calling the meet a "Challenge".

2013 Girls Start - Cougar Challenge

The competition is also part of the "Challenge", but that's harder to quantify. Teams are coming from around the Big Bend and Southwest Georgia, but this is a new season, and you can only guess who the powerhouses will be. Even if you've determined who the "A" teams will be, how do you know who will bring their "A" game to the course? Chiles High is entered, for instance, and their boys' squad will almost certainly be contenders in class 3A this season. Don't expect to see state 800-meter champion Avery Bartlett in Phipps Park, though, because the Timberwolves are also entered at the Holloway Park Jamboree in Lakeland that same morning.


Leon's Sukhi Khosla, the defending state cross-country champion in class 3A, is entered in the Cougar Challenge. This doesn't guarantee fireworks; he won the race in 16:47 last year. It does guarantee, though, that the winner of the boys' race is either going to be a 14:59.45/8:59.50/4:05.96 athlete, or is going to have to beat a 14:59.45/8:59.50/4:05.96 athlete.


If you're looking for the top female runner in Northwest Florida, it would be best to look a little farther west to Lynn Haven, just outside of Panama City. There Fort Walton Beach and rival Niceville will be among the teams mixing it up at Mosley High's sixth annual Dolphin Dash, and Fort Walton Beach junior Emma Rudman will be in that race.


Of course, if you go to either the Cougar Challenge or the Dolphin Dash, you'll have to miss Booker T. Washington High's 42nd annual Wildcat Invitational in Pensacola. More than a few teams from the west panhandle will be opening their season there, getting a preview of the site of the Gulf Coast Cross-Country Stampede and the FHSAA 2A Region 1 meet. The Stampede, scheduled for September 27, will also be held at the Escambia Equestrian Center, as will the Regional meet on November 6.


Enough talk. Let's run.

Northwest Florida Correspondent Herb Wills

Herb Wills' running career goes back to the 1971 boys' age-group mile at the Florida Relays. Since losing that race he has won the 1976 Florida High School class 4A cross-country championship, 1979 AAU USA junior titles in cross-country and the 10,000 meters, and the 1989 TAC USA 30K national championship. As a distance runner at Florida State University from 1978 to 1982, he was NCAA All-American three times in track and once in cross country, and won a silver medal in the marathon at the 1981 World University Games. Graduating Florida State with a degree in mathematics, in the following years Wills ran in the USA Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and placed tenth in the Boston Marathon in 1989. After more than a few years of duty as a hurdle setter and lane judge at track meets, Wills discovered that the public address announcer not only got to sit down at meets but was also sheltered from the rain. Since that revelation you can hear him with a microphone in his hand at several track and cross-country events in the Tallahassee area. Writing is another activity you can do while sitting down, and Wills has written about running for Racing South magazine and Tallahassee's local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.

You can read more running related tidbits in his blog at http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/