 The first week of the high school sport season in Bemidji has come and gone, but the cross-country squad has been putting in miles all summer long. Those long runs are crucial to make sure the team hits the ground running when the season starts. It's super important to build up our endurance and get ready for the season. We do like 10 mile Saturdays and lots of runs to get ready. Today was the team's annual two-mile time trial which creates a race-like atmosphere to break things up. Well it's really good because we finally get to get our legs moving, get the tempo under our legs, and then when we have our first race we'll be able to keep the same pace hopefully. It's also a great way to gauge how the team is shaping up, heading into the air. It was a solid effort out of both the boys and girls. I was very happy. It kind of shows what I was thinking that the team is in pretty good shape. They've had a good summer and I'm excited to see how the season is going to unfold for us. Today we did pretty good as a team and we had four guys up where we've never had before. For the boys team it's all about depth and competition. Well we have a really deep team this year. We have a lot of guys really close together competing with each other so it's going to be fun to watch how it all pans out. Well we'd like to have a few of us in the top 10 individually and definitely want to win the section championship. And for the girls it's all about replacing strong graduated runners including six-time state competitor Sadie Hammerin. We've lost a few super fast people but I think everyone's pushing this year to get faster. We have a few freshmen that are really stepping up their game and it's really good to see them progress. They keep us going because we don't want them to catch us so that's always good and then we're always there just trying to lead the way helping them get faster. They'll begin their season in just over a week at Shockey Strand Invitational at Moorhead. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.