Adrianna Velasco led the pack of Falcons through the course at the Huntington Beach Central Park on Sept.23.

The women competed at the Golden West College Central Park Classic where the team was among 17 schools that competed.

The women came out of the start strong, however, the unfamiliar course got the better of them and each runner quickly dropped back in the race.

“I think they kind of lost it in the second mile,” Coach Christopher Richardson said. “They lost contact with the actual race and where they should have been.”

The women were unable to gauge exactly where their hitting points needed for each leg of the race causing them to really lose it during the second mile.

The second mile is where the steepest and tiring hill of the race is located.

Velasco pushed her way up the 200-meter hill but was still deep in the pack of runners, sitting below the top 30 runners.

“They had no frame of reference where they should be in terms of time or mileage,” Richardson said, “This caused some fluctuation between, what we call, our top runners.”

Rather than running in a pack each runner ran somewhat an individual race.

Coach Brian Ramos mentioned, “The women did really well in Southern [California]. This time they completely forgot about everything.”

Mentality is everything when it comes to running. Ramos noticed that the women had a little anxiety going in to the day.

“We thought they would carry the momentum on from SoCal,” he said, “they kind of just panicked.

“We were completely out of it,” he finished.

This team is full of young runners who are still learning to adapt to different more difficult courses.

Unfortunately, this is not something they acquired prior to this race as they were trying use a strategy even though they didn’t know what that strategy was.

Richardson stated, “They’re trying to preserve something but they didn’t know when, or how, to do so [as far as perception].”

Pushing the women to their limits and feeling the fatigue throughout the race is something Richardson would like to see.

Ramos finished with saying, “We know what we need to do going forward. That’s sort of the expectation you have with a young team.

“There’s going be ups and downs but these are things you learn from.”