Penns Valley’s Chris Colwell is a CDT Athlete of the Week

Penns Valley’s Chris Colwell is a Centre Daily Times Athlete of the Week.

The senior cross country athlete finished first in the Mountain League race last week while leading his Rams team to their fourth straight league title. Colwell also set a personal record in the process, running the 5-kilometer race at his home course in 16 minutes, 21 seconds — nearly a half-minute better than his previous best.

Maybe most interesting of all, Colwell performed so well despite changing up his strategy and intentionally running near the back of the pack for the first half of the race. He made his move halfway through the race, and that energy helped him power through to a first-place time.

He finished ahead of the runner-up by 21 seconds.

This story was originally published October 22, 2017 at 8:10 PM with the headline "Penns Valley’s Chris Colwell is a CDT Athlete of the Week."