If she had to choose between being healthy after a top-five cross country meet finish or being sick after winning, Rhea County’s Mady Garland will choose the latter every time.
Garland won her first Chattanooga Cross Country League race Tuesday at Woodland Park, covering the five-kilometer race in 21 minutes, 39.48 seconds. Baylor’s Simon Holden, the 2010 CCCL boys’ runner of the year, won his race in 17:20.39.
Team titles went to Signal Mountain’s boys with 59 points and the Chattanooga Patriots girls with 66. The Eagles’ Sam Boyette and Matthew Marshall claimed top-10 finishes, while the home-schoolers’ Catherine Ellis finished second in leading the girls’ team victory.
Garland, who finished all-state in the Class AAA state meet last season, had a lot of top-five finishes last season but no victories in league races. She did win the Region 3-AAA meet but savored this win because it’s against a lot of Chattanooga’s best.
“I really was just going for the win today; I wasn’t worried about time,” she said after getting sick following her run. “I ran the same time I did last week [in the Baylor jamboree], but I’m a minute ahead of where I was this time last year.
“It was my first year running last season, and while I thought I did better at times, I didn’t really know what I was doing.”
She said attacking the hills around the two-mile mark distanced her from Gordon Lee’s Ashley Bankston, who would finish seventh.
“She really pushed me in the woods, but I started to create some distance around that mark,” she said. “I’m tired of second and third; I really wanted to win.”
Holden wasn’t able to distance himself until the last portion of the race, when he pulled away from second-place Nick McCormick of East Hamilton, Soddy-Daisy’s Matt Jenkins and Polk’s Patrick Shultz — all of whom finished within 25 seconds of him.
“There was a good group of guys to run with up front,” Holden said. “That helped a lot. I was able to settle in behind a couple of them, and after the mile mark we really started to pull away.”