{"id":385751,"date":"2023-02-21T06:01:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T20:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=385751"},"modified":"2023-02-21T06:01:54","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T20:01:54","slug":"snyder-amazed-by-bathurst-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/snyder-amazed-by-bathurst-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Snyder \u2018amazed\u2019 by Bathurst experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
The CNMI\u2019s Dr. Ron Snyder in action in the 55-59 division of the World Athletics Cross Country Championships 2023 last Sunday in Bathurst, Australia.(CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CNMI national athletics coach Dr. Ron Snyder got to play athlete for a day when he competed in the 55-59 division of the World Athletics Cross Country Championships 2023 last Sunday in Bathurst, Australia.<\/p>\n

The 56-year-old Saipan International School headmaster ran the 6-kilometer event and finished with an unofficial time of 36:09.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met my expectations for the race and think I could have done even better. It has been a long time since I competed in a field like that and I am afraid I got carried away in the 250m opening uphill start. The race conditions were really nice. Bathurst has been experiencing a heat wave so they moved the start time up from 12:15pm to 9:10am and it was a really nice temperature. Blue skies and hot but not too hot,\u201d Snyder said in a social media message to the Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n

While he thoroughly enjoyed the cross country run, the Run Saipan secretary\/treasurer admitted that it didn\u2019t come with difficulties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most challenging part of the run was right after my favorite part of the run. We have a slight decline and then run straight into a 15m long mud pit. I loved the mud pit. It is such a fun challenge to watch and to participate in. Coming out, we have to go right into a 15-degree hill. I was not a fan of that hill. But then we turned a corner and went right into another slight decline before running through a vineyard, where we went to choose whether we wanted to run through the Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, or Shiraz grapes. Then it is up another steep hill, down a decline and weaving amongst the tires in the chicane section before we had to do it all over again (each loop was 2 kilometers).\u201d<\/p>\n

In all, the 2020 NMSA Coach of the Year said the 6K cross country race was amazing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of athletes, both on a personal and athletic level, was incredible. It was a real treat sharing meals with the best runners in the world. All of the runners were great. In the masters we had nice conversations and I even got to run into one of my friends from the World Athletics Coaching Course I took several years ago in New Zealand. The U20 and senior runners were also great, sharing contact info, swapping shirts. It was a fun event!\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the World Athletics Cross Country Championships 2023 in general, Snyder said it was a great experience coaching CNMI national athletics team members Tania Tan and Sildrey Veloria in their 10K and personally running the 6K. He also fired a warning shot for future participants of local cross country races.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people were great, the organizers were amazing. and the comradery was spectacular, but I will probably keep coming back to the course itself. This was rated as the toughest cross country course in the history of the sport and it didn\u2019t disappoint: steep hills, sand pits, mud pits, slalom sections, and killer heat. I don\u2019t know what sadist was in charge but I have learned some great lessons and have some new ideas for next year\u2019s All Schools Cross Country Championships!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNMI national athletics coach Dr. Ron Snyder got to play athlete for a day when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":385726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}