Hills give you thrills
Friends of the team Brad Doering and Annika Sullivan flank the Rose City XC squad. Left to right: Ryan Misjan, Laura Thomas, Karl Dickman, Mia Yerton, Kyla Becker, Michael Mayper, Harry Holzgang, Talia Staiger, Erica Doering, and Alex Kurt. Photo by Sophie Mayper.
Written by Karl Dickman, edited by Chris Smith
On September 27, Team Red Lizard hosted the first of five races in their Stumptown Cross Series. They held the race at Gabriel Park in southwest Portland. Gabriel Park is divided in half by Vermont Creek, which flows through a ravine shaded by cedar and old growth Douglas-fir. The halves of the park slope down into the ravine, sometimes steeply. The two loop course passes through the ravine and winds around the basketball courts, baseball fields, and tennis courts that dot the hills above. The course has 400 feet of elevation gain over just 5 kilometers, even with half of it being downhill. As Alex Kurt put it, “Gabriel Park is comically difficult.”
The women’s race started at 9:00. To avoid torching their legs, the men’s team warmed up together on a baseball field next to the finish line, where they could catch some of the women’s race.
Kyla Becker was first across the finish line for Rose City, running 18:36. She won the race, beating Bowerman Track Club’s Carrie Dimoff by 22 seconds.
Erica Doering ran 21:42, finishing 10th and about six seconds behind Team Red Lizard’s accomplished masters runner Carre Heineck. Erica says, “Gabriel Park was a fun and tough course. I walked away with an understanding of where some of my cross country weaknesses are (e.g., confidence with running down hills) and excitement for the opportunity to work on improvements with my weaknesses. I am so glad I got out there and can't wait for Gabriel Park 2026!”
Talia Staiger and Mia Yerton finished neck and neck in 22:18 and 22:19, respectively. Both of them outkicked Janne Heinonen of Team Red Lizard in the chute. Talia says, “The ups and downs and hard effort felt so much like cross country in high school. It was so much fun to reconnect with that feeling.”
Mia says:
I definitely feel like I paced myself well and didn’t run out of steam too much! I slowed down a lot on the uphills after that first one and then just told myself to let the down hills carry me so I could recover!...
It was nice running in my neighborhood park because I knew all the landmarks and what the next section was going to be like.
Laura Thomas was the final team member through the line, running 26:25.
The men’s race came next. Ryan Misjan and Alex Kurt were the first and second finishers for Rose City once again. Ryan ran 19:13 and Alex 19:15. Ryan says, “That course [preview] walk threw the usual pacing gameplan out the window, that really encouraged going watchless. I felt way more present with little distraction, just racing the people around me.” Michael Mayper shared another quote from Ryan that he is still laughing at: “Grade-adjusted distance makes this count as my long run.”
Alex says, “The [cross-country] season doesn't kick off with pomp and circumstance the way football does. It sort of eases in gently. But once you do your final strides and line up on the start line, it all comes back to you pretty quickly."
Michael Mayper ran 20:34. Michael says:
This was my first XC race since senior year of high school. I wasn’t a fan of XC, I much preferred track. But I suffered through 4 years of JV XC before making varsity for the final couple races of my senior year. Unfortunately, I missed the last race of the high school season because I had a terrible case of poison oak haha, so I never really got closure. Since then, I always just assumed that I didn’t like running XC. So I was quite surprised how comfortable I felt when the gun went off to start the race. It was like meeting up with a group of friends from high school and feeling like I still belonged.
Harry Holzgang and Karl Dickman were the final two finishers, Harry running 21:14 and Karl running 21:23. Harry says, “[I] was excited to do [the] first XC race with a team for the first time in over a decade and get on a tough course… [I] think it was a good course in that it throws a lot of variety at you in a short distance with the climbs, terrain changes and twisting through the canyon.”
The women’s team finished second of three scoring teams, scoring 23 points to champion Team Red Lizard’s 15. The men’s team was second of two, 22 points to Team Red Lizard’s 14. Many more teams in both races posted incomplete scores.
Given the difficulty of the course, I worried that the participants would swear off the cross-country season after racing at Gabriel Park. Instead, the opposite happened. Everyone who was there was so visibly proud of what they had accomplished. Rose City faced a challenge together and came through it stronger than ever.
Results
Women’s 5k: Individual | Team
Men’s 5k: Individual | Team