What more could a racer ask for? ­­­

“It was very wet and muddy. It was very puddley. There was a big trench filed with ankle-deep water. It was fun,” said the B.C. junior girls cross-country champion from Kitsilano secondary, Annika Austin. “It was like the Tough Mudder.”

“Mud, rain, tough course, all that good stuff,” said Point Grey racer Thomson Harris. “It felt like proper cross country.”

The best high school racers in the province gathered Saturday morning at Jericho Beach Park as low clouds lashed sheets of water on the forested race course. Many athletes slipped and some fell as the soft, sodden grass turned muddier with each race until the fourth event of the day when the senior boys made three laps on the torn-up track. One racer from St. George’s was taken away in an ambulance after he went into shock at the finish line.

“The first lap especially was really chaotic,” said Point Grey racer Thomas Nobbs, who won bronze in a very competitive senior boys race. He leaped over another competitor who slipped and fell on the first 500 metres of the 6.9-kilometre course.

“I jumped over him, kind of clipped him. He got up and he was OK,” said Nobbs.

The fourth race of the day came down to the final five metres.

Kieran Lumb, who opted for longer, 13-milimetre spikes for the challenging conditions, made his move within sight of the finish line and churned past the two racers ahead of him. He won gold in 23 minutes, 47 seconds, passing national track and field team member Brendan Hoff to win by one second.

“I trained hard for this and raced even harder,” said Lumb, a cross-country skier and two-time city cross-country champion. “It feels really good.”

Three Vancouver racers finished in the top 10. In addition to the winner, Nobbs finished third in 23:51 and Harris came seventh in 24:42. Simeo Pont was 17th and Jules Verne secondary teammate Brodie Marshall was 31st. St. George’s racer Roberto Palayo-Mazzone was 18th.

Austin, who finished fifth at the club championships last month, won the 4.6-km junior girls race in 18:01.

“I just slowly started going faster after one lap and I didn’t know if [anyone] was catching me or not so I ran hard and just enjoyed the uphills because that’s what I train for,” said the Grade 10 student. “Then on the downhill, I relaxed and got my breath back a little bit. I wanted to come top three, that was my goal, and once you have the lead, you don’t want to give it up.”

Austin started training seriously last year and joined the Vancouver Thunderbirds after she was disappointed to not be selected for the outdoor education program, Trek.

“I’m excited to get a medal. It makes me feel good and it shows that the hard work that I did paid off,” she said. “Me and my friend didn’t get in, but I just got really mad and instead of sitting around and pouting, I wanted to make sure that I worked for something. So I put my negative energy into something to have a positive outcome.”

Austin won by 20 seconds. Two Grade 8 racers finished in the top five: Lord Byng’s Bridgett Baziw ran a tremendous race to finish fourth in 18:34 and Van Tech standout Kendra Lewis came fifth in 18:36.

Hannah Bennison literally ran away with the senior girls race. The B.C. club champion from Vernon secondary won the 4.6-km race in 16:41, nearly one minute faster than the silver-medallist.

Jaxon Mackie from Surrey’s Earl Marriott secondary won the 5-km junior boys race in 17:41.

Splattered with mud and grass, heat streaming off their shoulders and arms, racers stood in puddles and used rainwater to wash dirt off their limbs and faces. Family and friends stood back, bundled and under umbrellas or taking photos of athlete’s matching head-to-toe dirt.

It wasn’t that long since the most elite competitors in the country ran on the same course, albeit frozen. On the day of the 2014 club nationals, it snowed at Jericho.

Despite the rain, on Saturday the weather wasn’t as cold.

mstewart@vancourier.com

Photos from the B.C. high school cross-country championship