Big Bear High School Senior Max Sannes captured first place and the California Interscholastic Federation Cross County Championship on Saturday, November 27.
Sannes covered the five kilometer/3.10685595 mile rolling hill course at Woodward Park in Fresno in 15 minutes 0.5 seconds, outdistancing his closest competitor, Bryce Gilmore, who runs for Carlsbad Sage Creek.
Sannes set the pace from the outset of the 5,000 meter/5,468.0665 yard race. At around the 2,700 yard/1.5 mile point, Gilmore caught up with Sannes, seeming for a few seconds as if he were going to pull ahead, but he remained content to merely pace Sannes, who did not break nor alter his 12-mile-per hour stride in the least. The two runners hung together until at roughly the 4,150 yard/2.35 mile mark, Sannes began to pull away.
Sannes’ defeat of Gilmore appears to confirm the theory that many have, which is that constant training at 6,759 feet, where the atmosphere is thinner, confers upon a runner an advantage over a runner training at sea level.
Sannes is the sixth Big Bear High School runner to win the individual California state first place trophy. That puts Big Bear High in first place all time among California’s 1,327 high schools of all divisions.
Bears who previously claimed first place in the championship race were Ryan Hall, who finished first in both 1999 and 2000; Chad Hall, who crossed the finish line first in 2005; and Caleb Webb, who outsped all others in 2013 and 2014