MileStat.com stayed local on Monday morning before a week of traveling around the state again to visit the Maggie Walker program and one of the state's most respected and accomplished high school coaches in Jim Holdren. The team did their second hill workout of the season on a 200 meter hill repeat with a 400 meter jog or walk recovery at Byrd Park in Richmond. The varsity level runners for both boys and girls did as many as 10 repeats total in the workout.
The Maggie Walker girls are attempting to rebuild quickly after graduating five of their top seven. Despite the losses, the tradition and continued full attention and development by Coach Holdren with his younger and developmental runners each year seems to always have the program always ready to reload for another state meet bound squad. The team is led by senior Anna Spiers, who was All-State indoors at 1000 meters and ran personal bests of 2:15 in the 800 and 5:06 in the 1600 meters this past spring. The rising star for the Maggie Walker girls is sophomore Rachel Galton who really came on in the outdoor season as a freshmen running a 11:28 3200 then finishing her season with a 18:53 5K performance on the track at the MileStat.com Gala. Behind Spiers and Galton is a group of five girls who have 5K personal bests in the 20 minute range who look to close the gap on their front two in order to make their team more competitive this fall.
The Masters of Overachieving is a good way to describe the Maggie Walker boys program, who despite often being dwarfed by their successful girls program and each year more concerned about getting out the district with a top four finish, seem to have taken the rest of the region and maybe themselves off guard when they have snuck into the top 4 at the regional meet and moved onto the state meet. The past two years, the Maggie Walker boys have finished the same place in the region as they did in the district meet which last year they went from third in the Colonial District to a solid 7th place finish in the AAA state race. This year's team will not be fooling anyone that they can turn it on when it matters come championship season time as there is hope among the squad that they can snap the seven year drought from the Maggie Walker boys' last district team title in 2002. Senior Marc Breidenbaugh leads this squad as he had a very strong close to this 2009 cross country season as the 8th fastest returnee from last year's AAA state race, ran a PR of 16:03 at Foot Locker South, and earned All-American honors with a top 20 finish at the USATF Junior Olympic Nationals.
Watch Maggie Walker workout video & interviews below!
The Workout: 200m Hill Repeats
Core Workout (following hill repeats)