Bob Firman brings familiarity and firsts for Mountain View’s Halladay

By Marlowe Hereford for DyeStat 

No cars, no people and plenty of open space.

This is the setting for Lexy Halladay’s training grounds, and she doesn’t have to leave home to get there.

The Mountain View High sophomore lives in Kuna, Idaho, within Mountain View school district boundaries and has logged many miles with younger brother, Jessie, on dirt roads in Bureau of Land Management land right outside her house. The terrain varies from hills to flat stretches, and one can see for miles in every direction.

It is a good 20- to 25-minute drive from Mountain View High in Meridian, far enough away to make returning home to retrieve a forgotten school item troublesome. Traffic is rare, however, which is much to Halladay’s liking.

“It’s really nice,” Halladay said. “Nobody’s around. There’s nothing out there except for hawks.”

Halladay frequented those roads upon making the quick turnaround from outdoor track season to preparing for cross country.

Within three weeks after the Idaho state track and field championships ended May 20, Halladay won the Girls Dream Mile in a national freshman record 4 minutes, 41.80 seconds at the adidas Boost Games in Boston and placed third in the mile in 4:44.24 at the Brooks PR Invitational.

By then, her track season had overlapped with cross country preseason. She said she took two weeks off from running following Brooks before getting back to work. She estimates she put in 30 miles per week once she resumed training.

“My teammates, by the time I was done with track season, they were three weeks into cross country training,” Halladay said. “I started getting back into running and I picked up my mileage as the summer went on.”

The quick turnaround has shown no signs of hindering her progress.

Halladay began her sophomore cross country season with two wins at eastern Idaho meets, running a course-record 19:00.4 to win the Cardinal Classic on Sept. 2 in Soda Springs and claiming the Tiger-Grizz Invitational in 18:49.6 on Sept. 8 in Idaho Falls to become the meet’s first girls varsity repeat champion in six years.

Mountain View coach Tracy Harris said Halladay went about her preparations for cross country season wisely, and they had discussed how other runners would be a few weeks ahead of her in training.

“Every runner needs that break,” Harris said. “Even though she’s a high-caliber runner and there was all the travel in track season, she needs time off. We’re working harder than we were last year. She’s absolutely rocking it.”

The annual Bob Firman Invitational at Eagle Island State Park is Saturday, and it brings a mix of familiarity and firsts for Halladay.

Mountain View practices often at Eagle Island State Park, and Halladay last raced at the venue at last year’s Nike Cross Northwest Regional Championships.

Mountain View did not compete at Bob Firman last year, however, because it occurred the same weekend as the Roy Griak Invitational in Minnesota, where Halladay won the varsity gold division title in a race that featured more than 400 runners.

This will be Halladay’s first Bob Firman appearance since winning the 2014 middle school race as a seventh grader, and she is looking forward to competing there for the first time as a high school runner. As of Wednesday, 146 high school teams from eight states and one Canadian province have registered for the meet.

“I’m excited,” Halladay said. “I know there will be great competition.”

Saturday marks a first for Harris as well. Harris said the Mavericks alternate each year competing in Minnesota and the Nike Portland XC Invite, both of which usually overlap with Bob Firman in late September. There was no such overlap this year.

“Those things kinda fell into place,” Harris said. “This is the first time I’ve had my varsity teams there in forever. Mountain View opened in 2003 and I started taking teams elsewhere since 2006. It’s gonna be a great meet.”

Saturday’s girls elite race also brings familiar faces for Halladay. Bob Firman brings the opportunity for Halladay to race Annie Hill, a Glacier MT senior who claimed last year’s NXR Northwest individual title by four seconds over Halladay.

Harris anticipates Saturday’s race to be equally tight.

“Lexy has been chomping at the bit to get back and race Annie,” Harris said. “Annie takes it out hard and pushes the pace. Lexy is a heck of a competitor.”

Halladay will have three other opportunities to compete at the venue this season as the 5A District 3 meet, the state meet and NXR Northwest all take place there. She described the Eagle Island State Park course as both physically and mentally demanding.

“You have to have a good mindset for it,” Halladay said. “I feel like we’re lucky to have a course like that here.”

Harris has been in the practice of taking his runners to practice at Eagle Island State Park for years. The Mavericks practiced there twice last week and once this week. Harris said his runners know the course so well that he tries not to schedule too many practices there, but he encourages them to embrace that familiarity.

“You have to take advantage of every nook and cranny,” Harris said. “Use that in your mind to your advantage over the other runners. A meet like Bob Firman is not only a big meet, but it’s a loaded meet. It's not a race for someone who likes to start out slow and move up. In my mind, it’s definitely a course that is a strategic course.”

Halladay said she is a fan of the venue, which is what she considers to be an ideal course. She likes Eagle Island’s narrow trails, trees, beach and steep ascents and descents for the same reasons she enjoys her Kuna training grounds: scenery and various terrain.

“I don’t like to run on a golf course,” she said with a laugh. “That’s not fun. I like being more in nature.”