La-La-La-LAWRENCE!

Happy 50th post! Right now I am currently blogging whilst transfixed by the moon. Oh the moon! The sky has been a beaut today; its been absolutely lovely outside (especially the pink and gold sunset on the bus ride home, hope you all took the time to appreciate it :) Besides throwing it in there that I'm extremely hungry for dinner (so I'm going to type this up fast), I'm ready to start! Aight, so there were seven scoring girl's teams, and nine on the guys side (I believe)! Erzsebet Nagy stole the show once again, winning on her home course. Teresa Murphy of Brunswick was second, and I rounded up the top three. Our girls, I was very impressed to learn, placed four in the top ten, and we won with 31 points. Brunswick followed with 64. On the guy's side, Jonathan Stanhope of Bangor kinda came out of nowhere (he's legit, you'll be hearing about him for sure this season), being pursued hot-on-the-heals by Benson Worthington of B-wick. Mt. Blue's own Justin Tracy (Jr.) lead the first mile and finished 4th with an 18:02. It really made a difference in the mental preparation department carrying the team's iPod player during the course walk with our playlist going. And, if anyone from Lawrence happens to read this post that didn't already hear it from me, we really appreciate the food station that you provide the runners, it's fabulous. See you guys at Leavitt next week, without the hill :( Awesome jobs today running, now for dinner :D
KKNW, Addie

Home Meet, Home Mountain.

Home of Mt. Blue Relays, the Mt. Blue High School course is a legend, known throughout the state as one of the most challenging (and usually muddy) race venues in Maine. This year the orchard where the start and finish are looked quite charming; a wedding had taken place there during the weekend of Irene. The bases of the old, gnarly apple trees had been circled in mulch, and pots spilling with flowers had been scattered hither-dither atop the rings of mulch. As we learned in elementary school to never judge a book by its cover, Maine athletes have realized to take the same caution with our course. Pretty in the field, hilly in the woods. The team did not do a course walk because we'd previewed the following day in practice, and I was quite surprised during the race when things started to get messy. They were not conditions to PR in. That being said, I will now contradict that statement by announcing that Ersie Nagy of Lawrence set a new course record. The previous one had been set by my close friend, Melody Lam in 2009. On the boy's side, Harlow Ladd (Mess) just barely missed the boy's course record held by my brother, Kelton Cullenberg. As for team scores, both the boys and the girls managed victories. What more can I say other than the fact that after the race, we had an awesome team-sleepover and had a shirt swap, where we made a team shirt for another person on the team.

KKNW, Addie

High School Cross Country Preview, Class A

-Lewiston Sun Journal

KKNW, Addie

It's A Documentary!

This year I've taken the liberty of composing a documentary of the MBXC season.. which necessitates my showing up to all of the venues with my face behind a camcorder. Feel free to inquire about an interview (spaces are filling up fast :p), request to have a still-frame taken with a MB team member and your Great Aunt Fuffa, or even just submit ridiculously awesome candids of the team, I promise they wont mind that you do so. A link to the video will be added below at the end of the season, and the finished documentary will probably receive its very own post. I extend my thanks in advance to the Maine running community :D
KKNW, Addie

Quite the Dueling Team

Alright, this is my first post on the MBXC blog so let me introduce myself. I'm Maryam, a junior runner and co-captain of our lovely team. The first thing to note on this post is that this Wednesday we had our first annual Dual-A-Thon. A tradition in our group where people compete in teams with one 2-mile runner, one 8-mile biker and another 2-mile runner. This year was a first for us because (due to lack of a safe road) we ran/biked on the nearby railroad bed. Coming in the lead was iron-man Justin Tracy with a 52:23. Followed closely by a team of Dustin Tracy and Silas Rogers (54:07). Alex Chandler also iron-manned it with a 60:01. Everyone ran well AND had fun documenting the time with Addie's video camera, as well as bike-riding lessons.

Tonight we also had our first team dinner of the year. The food was delicious as always with Sully's famous mac n' cheese and some kind of berry dessert that some mysterious person always brings (thank you). After swimming and eating, some of us relaxed and got pumped for our home meet tomorrow by putting on fake tattoos and listening to Nicki Minaj.

KKNW, Maryam






Kila Kitu Ni Wezekana

(This tattoo has inspired Addie to want to actually get a real one like it)

Sandy River Track State Meet!

Alright, so I realize that I created this blog on account of wanting the world to know about our fun high school team, but I cannot exclude mentioning our "feeder program" as well, the Sandy River summer track and cross country teams (Fr. Katherine Gunther, our current #2 girl runner, has recently come to us from the program). Here's a brief background on the program: My parents are go-getters, so when the Farmington Rec. AND the Mt. Blue Middle School decided to both discontinue their running programs, they were naturally furious. The reasoning for shutting down both programs was for lack of participation, so it was natural that they would decide to make budget cuts in those areas. Several years later, my parents, as well as help from parents of the young athletes on the team, have turned the programs around, more than doubling the participation of each program. I help as a volunteer coach (in fact, it's volunteer work for everyone). The middle school-aged team went from having two girls on it, to having a State Champion girls team over the course of a year. Props, girls!
Below are some pictures taken at the recent USATF Youth Summer Track State Meet.
KKNW, Addie


Our boys were super excited to place as a relay team at States!

My little sister, Kahryn, and I (watch for her in a few years :)

Our lovely team banner for the traditional parade

Sandy River Track Team State Qualifiers 2011! Awesome job, team :D

Scot Laliberte 2011

I'm always incredibly antsy at the end of the summer to get on the trails and begin racing, which is one of the many reasons why I love having a pre-season meet such as the Scot Laliberte Invitational. At the start of the race (it was a 2.5 mile course for both varsity and JV this year), Tom Wells gave a very nice short speech about Scot. He said, "It poured here yesterday, and the East Coast is preparing for Hurricane Irene to hit tomorrow. But look up, folks. An absolutely blue sky. That's a perfect description of how Scot lived." And I fully admit that I, along with half of my girl's team, got a wee-bit teary eyed and shivery at those words. The gun goes off, which precedes one of the most hectic starts I ever experience in races.. because boys are usually, not more aggressive in the start, but certainly stronger shovers, on accident of course (I love "course" puns on this blog.. as well as Pre ones, now that I think about it :P) Our top guy finisher was Jr. Justin Tracy (13th) followed by Jr. Sully Jackson. In the girl's JV race, Sr. Courtney Qi podiumed (9th). I ended up as the 4th girl (88th overall) with a 17:26.. both place and time were my exact goals :D Following me were Fr. Katherine Gunther (15th) and Louisa Stancioff (after Katherine) Also, Mt. Blue was pleasantly surprised that we pulled off a 3rd place overall team finish, behind Brunswick and Mt. Ararat. Nicely done, gang :D
KKNW, Addie