The Heartbreakers officially opened up cross country season with a shot across the bow, letting everyone know, "we've been doing WORK!" USATF New England developed a new format to meet the needs around COVID and invited teams from all around the region to compete in the 52nd Annual Codfish Bowl Cross Country Classic. The event was a "thank you" of sorts for sticking with the organization, free to USATF clubs, and also an opportunity to get a proper sanctioned and timed result against some other clubs & crews. If you're not familiar with cross country scoring, runners compete as a unified team. Places (not times) are added up from the top 5 (usually a team of 7) and the lowest score wins. Therefore, every place of those 5-7 athletes matters in a big race. You race your guts out. This new hybrid model gave each team the course to themselves for an hour to warm up, learn the route, and race a 5K together. They allowed 25 runners total and after all teams completed their turn, results were compiled and victors crowned. With team-scoring places assigned only to teams who filled a squad of the minimum 5 scoring runners, our team score looked like this:
Women: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 (16 points, first place) [second place 73 points]
Men: 1, 2, 3, 4, 23 (33 points, first place) [second place 50 points]
DAAAAMMMMNN!
