Sam Ahlbeck was an immediate natural at the sport. Having left football to run he immediately placed himself as one of the top league and district runners in his first season. Sam went on to win the state championship in 2004 with a 5k time of 15:46. Sam went on to run for Washington State University.
This summer has seen several worthy attempts by Josh Kratzer, Sam Ahlbeck, and Max Ferguson to capture the coveted 15K Lake Youngs loop record .
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Sam Ahlbeck today became the first Lindbergh cross country runner to win a state title. In fact, Sam was the first runner from the Seamount League to win the individual crown. Sam’s time of 15:45 is the 6th fastest time for a 3A runner since the state meet was changed over to a 5k.
Sam went through his first mile in 5:07 and in about 9th place. He gradually began working himself up over the next half mile until he was on the heels of the five front runners. Moving up the slight hill to the two mile mark (10:11) Sam moved into 2nd. With 1000m to go Sam made a strong move up another slight hill to take the lead and put 10 meters on the pack. A little bit later the sophomore from Seattle Prep, Max O’Donoghue-McDonald, made his move past the pack to try to make his run for the crown. Sam and Max over the last 800m of the race pulled away from the field. Crossing the camel back hills heading up to the finish O’Donoghue-McDonald made a move for the lead and Sam held him off. Sam made a sustained surge up the hill till the crest where he changed gears and flew down the final 150m.
Great job Sam!
Both teams ran good races at this year’s 2004 West Central District Meet. The girls had 5 PRs and the guys had 3 PRs.
In the girls race Madeline Platt barely missed going to state, she places 22nd and needed to be in the top 20. Next year hopefully she will be helping lead our girls team to a state berth. Olga, Tori and Patty ran a smart race from start to finish. They sat back in the pack for the first mile and surged strategically afterward to pass tons of runners. Olga and Tori pulled away from Patty some in the last mile, Olga barely outkicked Tori down the final 200m stretch. Christina Patti had yet another huge PR. Last week at the Seamount championships Christina ran a 37 second PR to bring her time under 24 minutes for the first time. This weekend she dropped another 43 seconds to a time of 23:13. Bailey was back and racing again this weekend she also PRed with a time of 25:00.
The boys once again put together another tough district race. Sam Ahlbeck led the way to a pretty easy win in 15:51. The surprise of the day, to most, was our number 2 runner James Turnbull. Yesterday was only James second varsity race with the league meet being his first. James ran a big PR last weekend to break 18 minutes for the first time. Yesterday, James decided to run and just go with however fast he was taken out. During the race he nearly missed a mile PR, set a two mile PR and set a huge 5k PR. Turnbull’s time of 16:56 puts him at 23rd on the all-time list. James was followed by Andy Dean(17:16, PR), Tor Ferguson(17:18, PR) and Javier Casio (17:20).
The boys scored 108 points which placed them 5th missing the last start berth by 20 points. The team scoring went as follows: Highline (72), Pennisula (82), Hazen (87), Renton (88).