Dr. Colton's Baylor XC Alumni Virtual 800 Relay

Oliver Townsend, Baylor '05 and son of my high school cross country coach, the late great Van Townsend, came up with an idea in early March during the early goings of this Coronavirus Quarantine Shutdown to reach out to many of the Baylor Cross Country and Distance Track (BXC) Alumni to hold a Virtual 800 relay during the typical Spring Fling dates for old BXC grads to train and compete against each other.

At first, we weren't sure what the turn-out would be, but it ended up being quite impressive:

25 Baylor graduates accepted the challenge.

The graduates spanned from 1995 to 2016 (22 years).

17 of those 22 graduating classes represented.

6 TSSAA Cross Country State Championships within those years.

Oliver divided it up into 5 teams of 5 for each relay. My team consisted of a bunch of younger guys that I had coached while I was in undergrad at UTC.

There were some time adjustments if you ran in certain gear:

2 seconds off if you wore your BXC singlet.

2 seconds off if you wore your high school spikes.

2 seconds off if you carried a baton while you raced.

I ended up running a 2:10 (adjusted from 2:16). My high school personal best was 1:58, twelve years ago, so I'll take it!

Bryson, my brother, ended up running 2:18 (adjusted from 2:24).

I want to thank Jan and Bill Gautier for letting us on the Baylor track for this awesome alumni virtual gathering!