So just how huge is the high school portion of the annual Mt. SAC Cross-Country Invitational? So huge that multiplying the number of this weekend’s projected finishers by the race distance would mean runners will combine to total enough mileage to cover the entire perimeter of the continental United States... a whopping three times!

          That’s thousands of race bib numbers, tens of thousands of safety pins for those numbers, 20,000-plus running shoes and well over 50,000,000 strides! YIKES!

          But Mt. SAC has never been just about numbers; it has been about sensational quality and high-interest storylines as well, with this year’s 56th edition of the meet again primed to entertain cross-country fanatics and the novice spectator alike.

           Need quality? How about possibly the greatest male field of runners in meet history! Led by returning First-Team All-American Mohamed Trafeh and junior class course recordholder Troy Swier, Saturday’s featured Individual Sweepstakes race showcases 9 runners rated among the top 28 in the Western United States! With just the right early pacing and the cooperation of Mother Nature during this weekend’s projected heat wave, top runners from California, Arizona and Nevada should unleash a serious assault on Ryan Hall’s two-year-old course record (note: the course was slightly changed in 1999, with research showing the new layout to run roughly 18 seconds per runner faster than the old layout, in which Jeff Nelson held the longstanding course record at 14:32.

           On the girls’ side, national team accolades headline the competition, with acclaimed squads from Murrieta Valley, Reno of Nevada, and Sultana all set to challenge the revered course. Reno boasts among the finest teams in its state’s history this fall, while Murrieta Valley and Sultana seem set to one-up the course team time record achieved here by Sultana a year ago.

            Additionally, the Mt. SAC extravaganza will once again lend good insight into next month’s CIF-State Championships as a whopping 48 of the state’s 100 state-ranked teams will be in action – with 46 of them electing to compete in the Sweepstakes races!