Heyne runs to fourth place finish

Published by admin on Wed, 11/06/2024 - 9:00am

English Valleys senior Gage Heyne runs down a hill during the early portions of the class 1A State cross country meet held Nov. 2 in Fort Dodge. Heyne finished fourth overall in the boys race.

By:

Mark Schafer

The News-Review

FORT DODGE – Throughout the race all he wanted to do was keep the leader in sight.

Not only was he able to keep the leader in sight, for most of the race, English Valleys senior runner, Gage Heyne, was right on the footsteps of the race leader.

For over two miles in the Nov. 2 class 1A State cross country race, Heyne was running almost step-for-step with North Iowa senior Gavin Grundhovd.

“The start of the race was really fine for me, I was relaxed through most of the start,” Heyne said after his run. “Gavin put in a couple of surges early on which kind of killed my mental game, it also put me above the threshold of where I wanted to run at.”

Heyne kept pace for as long as he could with Grundhovd, but as the runners crossed the two and a half mile mark, the pace that Grundhovd was running proved to be too much, and too fast for Heyne.

“His pace just put a lot of bunch of lactic acid in my legs, which didn’t let me stay relaxed over the last part of the race,” Heyne explained.

As the cheers of the crowd grew towards the end of the race Heyne’s distance between Grundhovd started to grow bigger. Heyne continued to battle, but his chance at beating Grundhovd went away as the two seniors neared the finish line.

Just before the finish line, as Grundhovd was pumping his fists in the air to celebrate the win, Heyne used the momentum from the final hill to carry him to a fourth place finish. Overall the English Valleys runner finished with a time of 16:08.9, just 11 seconds behind Grundhovd.

“Coming into the race I had a little higher expectations of where I wanted to finish,” Heyne said. “To be able to finish in the top-5 with this group of guys is really good. I put out the best race I could, and that’s all I could do.”

Heyne raced with teammate Isaac Frazier who had also been able to qualify for the class 1A race.

Frazier, a freshman, was able to finish the race in 90th place overall. In the race Frazier was able to finish the race with a time of 17:53.9 to cap off his first year running in high school.

“There’s not much more I could have asked for in the cross country season,” Heyne said. “I was able to drop by personal record from last year by about 36 seconds. It was still a good season.”

Photos by Mark Schafer | The News-Review