A Dream Come True

By Josh Karadeema

 Runners dream of going out to San Diego, CA, to run in the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championships. 

For Chris Godwin, a senior from Buchholz HS in Gainesville,FL, that dream will now be a reality. The ninth place finisher at Foot Locker South, Mark Blackmon, from Charlotte, North Carolina, could not make it out to San Diego for an undisclosed reason. 

Chris ran strong races all season long and capped of his Senior Florida High School career with a runner-up performance at the State 4A Cross Country Meet with a time of 15:37.40. 

Some may have called it an upset but after talking to Chris, he was motivated and knew he had a great chance to succeed at Little Everglades Ranch. 

 Chris carried his success into the post season where he ran a PR of 15:10 in Charlotte, NC, at the Foot Locker South Regional Elite Race. 

The only disappointment about it was that he finished 11^th, one spot away from qualifying for Foot Locker Nationals.  Although disappointed, Chris was elated that he smashed his PR by a whopping 12 seconds.  Colleges began contacting him more and his confidence was boosted. 

The next week, he won the FACA All-Star Meet in Tallahassee, FL, with a time of 15:45.78.  After that race, the entire nation thought his season was over and expected not to hear from him again until track season.  But Chris has been training all week just in case something like this happened. 

 Fast forward to Thursday night around 10 P.M.  Chris logged onto his Facebook profile to see that a friend told him Blackmon couldn’t make it to Nationals.  Chris didn’t know for sure if he was going until this morning.  Ecstatic that he was racing at Foot Locker Nationals, Chris, who was in the middle of class at the time, ran out celebrating that he was going to San Diego. 

He is going to have to run the course blind because he leaves Tampa at 6:50 P.M. tonight and will get into Los Angeles tonight around 9:10 P.M. PST.  He will then have to drive to San Diego and hopefully get there before midnight; Chris doesn’t care though.  He gets to fulfill his dream and run at Foot Locker Nationals.

Make sure to check out www.distancepreps.com tomorrow at 11:30 am EST for a live race feed, a hosted blog, race photos, and post race athlete interviews.

Chris Godwin Post-Race Interview

Foot Locker South