In only the meet's second year the 2016 installment of the RVA Relays looks to be one of the most exciting meets of the entire season. Aside from the awesome idea of running under the lights around Pole Green Park's fast and flat 2500m loop, the competition is jam-packed with stars and deep teams.
Coming back to defend their titles this year are the Midlothian Boys and Maggie Walker Girls. Though both teams lost major components from their winning squads, they both also got a lot stronger on the legs who do return. Don't count either of these teams out.
Leading the way though for the Girls' A race is the relay team from Patriot. They are led by senior Rachel McArthur who blasted a meet and course record 7:46 last year. Her teammate Abby Wied went 8:28 for the fourth fastest split too.
That combination will likely be insurmountable for any other team if all the other runners run well. Patriot will be chasing Maggie Walker's record of 42:56.83. That is a pace of 8:36 averaged over all five runners... something that is doable but definitely hard to achieve.
Their biggest competitors will likely be Ocean Lakes, Maggie Walker, Midlothian, Glen Allen, Deep Run, Western Albemarle, Osbourn Park, and a sneaky team from Western Branch.
Each of these teams has one thing in common though... they have strong anchors. No one has quite an anchor like Patriot this year but if for some reason they switch things up and Rachel McArthur isn't anchoring, it could be quite a race for these other anchors as they try and chase down Patriot.
Our predicted order of finish: Patriot, Maggie Walker, Osbourn Park, Glen Allen, Western Branch.
On the boys' side of things it is a whole lot harder to predict how this race is going to turn out. Just a day before the meet there are 24 teams entered and at least five that are in serious contention for this title.
IF we had to select one team though to be pinned as the favorite we would pick Patriot slightly ahead of Forest Park. Both teams have run very well for 5K but Deep Run, Midlothian, and Maggie Walker cannot be counted out.
Both Maggie Walker and Deep Run will be vying for that fastest split honor with two monster anchors on their teams. Maggie Walker's Ryan Buscaglia enters the season in the best shape of his life and returns after having split 7:01 last year.
Deep Run's Bashir Mosavel-Lo split 7:11 to rank 4th on splits.
Midlothian's record of 36:57.18 could very well be in danger and it is going to be very exciting to see how close all these teams' anchors get the baton.
Maggie Walker definitely has the most firepower if the race is close after three legs. If they are even with Forest Park, Patriot, Deep Run and whoever else is up there then they have a real good shot at taking the title home. It would be very hard for anyone to out split Ryan Buscaglia who may dip under 7:00 this year!
Check out the "A" lineups on the following pages