This season we want to highlight athletes weekly who have had incredible improvements, supported their team in a profound way, and have a championship mindset on and off the cross country course.
This week's FLRunners "Pick of the Week" is Paxon senior, Leah Pelham.
Pelham opened up her season this past weekend at the Cecil Field Summer Classic. She went out nice and comfortable, sticking with a pack of Bolles girls through the mile marker. Stride by stride, she kept her eyes up and focused on the next place -- second place that is.
See, last season Pelham finished 28th at the Cecil Field meet. The year before, 40th. To see second within reach though, wasn't a shock to Pelham.
The Paxon senior has put in a summer worth of hard training. Adding to her typical base mileage of 20 miles to now 40 miles a week.
She kicked to a PR of 20:03 to finish third right at the line this weekend at Cecil Field -- over a minute improvement from her 2018 PR and nearly 3 minutes improvement from her performance at last year's Cecil Field meet.
Champions are made in the off-season and Pelham has shown that she could accomplish some serious goals come November this year.
She finished 60th at last year's 3A Region 1 final in a PR of 21:09. This year, she moves down to 2A and will go head to head with seven Bolles girls to compete for a chance to run at her first ever state meet.
With an improvement like this one, we can expect to hear her name more often this 2019 season.
