VIANO COLUMN: Running with the boys

Listen, this isn’t meant to put undue pressure on a high school student, but Annie Hill’s almost assuredly going to win her third straight Class AA state cross country championship on Saturday at Rebecca Farm.

Hill, the sensational Glacier junior, is so fast that the drama during this cross country season has been less about whether she’s going to win and more about what the clock’s going to say when she hits the finish line.

She is the fastest runner in the state, one of the dozen or so fastest distance runners in the country and owns the all-class state meet three-mile record (16:30.7), set last year. As a sophomore.

And yes, I know she finished 12th at the Mountain West Invitational on Oct. 1, but she led that race in the early stages and her coach, Jacob Dietz, chalked her late fade up to “some poor pre-race decisions in terms of nutrition.”

She’s won every race she’s entered other than that one, including three straight since the Mountain West.

Hill’s closest competitor on Saturday will be Billings Senior’s Tiahna Vladic, a nationally-ranked runner in her own right, but Vladic’s best times all year have hovered around 17 minutes. A healthy and properly fueled Hill should cross the finish line right around, if not under, her state record time, and the rest of her competitors, Vladic included, won’t be anywhere in her sight.

That’s not normally the case at practice, though, because since the very start of her prep career, Hill’s been surrounded by runners more her speed.

“I’ve been running with the guys pretty much since I started running,” Hill said. “I did a lot of running with my older brother (Noah). For most of the workouts and the longer runs (in training) I tend to run with the boys. They push me and make me go faster and make me better.”

And there’s the rub.

Elite runners, heck, even anyone who’s ever run a 5k on the weekend, knows the difference between racing your watch and actually racing another human being.

“Like being chased by a bear or running on a treadmill by yourself,” Dietz offered as a comparison. “That competitive reflex is the same thing as our primal instinct. You get into primal mode.”

Hill agrees.

“It’s tougher to push yourself out of your comfort zone without somebody pushing you to,” she said. “When I’m running scared I run faster — not exactly scared, but if there’s somebody close behind me I know they can catch up. They can take my time from not just good to a great race. It’s a lot harder by myself.”

Saturday, Hill will line up with the fastest girls in the state alongside her and will try and run as fast as she possibly can, taking her body to its physical limit.

But both Dietz and Hill agree that if the state’s fastest boys were lined up next to the ultra-competitive Hill, those limits could be stretched even further.

“Undoubtedly,” Dietz answered when asked if Hill’s time would be better racing the boys.

“She would be in the middle of the group and all of a sudden you have those people around you that would push you around every corner. Not that Annie doesn’t do that, but there’s just a little bit more.”

“I think I would (run faster),” Hill answered. “It’s hard to say. I really want to push myself to be where I want to be by myself, but having somebody right next to me would help.”

So the next question, of course, is why doesn’t Hill race the boys?

The short answer is that it creates a type of slippery slope. If, as agreed, she would run a faster time racing boys, how many girls would be allowed to switch into the boys field?

Assuming they all would run theoretically faster times against faster competition, how would the times — and finishing positions — of girls running with boys be factored into team scoring?

The other concern is that it creates less of a race and more of a time trial, erasing the clean optics of a bunch of people on a course, with the first person crossing the finish line anointed the winner.

Still, Hill and her coach have kicked around the idea of racing against the opposite sex.

“I would love to be able to run with the boys (in competitions),” Hill said.

“I think that I could be a lot better if I was racing with them. Not only because I would have somebody pushing me but because I’m competitive, especially with the (Glacier) boys. Even if I don’t say it out loud, a lot of things are in my head and if I can be ahead of them it makes me feel better.”

For now, though, Hill will have to settle for racing her watch. As she chases history — again — on Saturday, the question of just how fast the fastest female in the state can go remains a tantalizingly difficult one to answer.

Andy Viano is a reporter and columnist at the Daily Inter Lake who, like lots of boys, can’t run nearly as fast as Annie Hill. He can be reached at aviano@dailyinterlake.com or (406) 758-4446.