Blade learns to savor every stride forward
Prep distance standout shatters two course records on heels of junior-year setbacks
After shattering the course record in her first two cross country races of the season, Rylee Blade of Santiago High School in Corona, California, could be expected to take a shot at lowering the all-time best at this weekend’s Clovis Invitational in Fresno.
But Blade knows better than to get ahead of herself.
On the one hand, she’s coming off a surprising win in the Woodbridge Cross Country Classic on Sept. 21 where she defeated a high-caliber field — including runners who are now three of the top six girls in national rankings by dyestat.com — in a powerful performance.
Her clocking of 15 minutes 20.3 seconds over a flat three-mile course at Orange County Great Park was nearly 22 seconds faster than what she ran in her fourth-place finish in last year’s meet and 12.2 seconds better than last year’s winner.
Until Blade’s stellar effort nearly three weeks ago, last year’s first-place clocking of 15:32.5 by Jane Hedengren of Timpview High in Provo, Utah, had been the fastest prep time ever recorded over a three-mile course by a high school girl in the U.S.
Yet Blade knows from experience racing doesn’t always go according to plan.
Roughly seven months ago she was dealing with a painful iliotibial band issue in her right leg that was severely limiting her training, and last December a slip-and-fall in rough conditions hampered her performance in the national cross country championship race.
Asked about her goals for the Clovis Invitational on Saturday, Blade made no mention of aiming for the course record of 16:30.3 which Claudia Lane of Malibu set in 2017 over the 5,000-meter layout at Woodward Park.
Instead Blade has learned to do the work and savor victory in whatever form it takes.
“I definitely want to get out there and improve my time from last year,” she said. “I want to try and win the race, but if I get out there and run a [personal record], it’s just as big as a win. Sometimes you can lose the race but still win.”
Now the No. 3-ranked girl in the latest national rankings, Blade placed second in the Clovis meet last year when her 16:45.8 clocking left her six and a half seconds back of first-place Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura High. Engelhardt went on the next month to win her second consecutive California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Division II title.
However, in her dominant performance in the Woodbridge Classic, Blade finished ahead of Engelhardt for the first time in her career. Engelhardt placed fifth in a time of 15:40.2.
“She’s always someone I’ve looked up to and seen ahead of me, so just being able to beat her, it showed me that all my hard work had paid off,” said Blade, who has made a verbal commitment to Florida State University. “But I know that she started training a little bit later this season because she ran in the Olympic Trials in track. She’s someone that I’m always looking forward to going up against because I know that she’ll bring out a fast time in me.”
While Blade’s time in the Woodbridge meet might have surprised some, both she and Santiago cross country coach Rick Etheridge knew that her training indicated she was in superb shape entering the meet.
She said her 9:54 clocking in a two-mile time trial in August, on a course that looped through the Yucaipa High School campus and around the athletic fields, indicated she was significantly more fit than at the same time last year when she clocked 10:10 over a two-mile layout at a park in Riverside that she considered to be a faster course than the one at the high school.
“I wanted to improve my time from last year, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that big of a jump,” Blade said. “I knew that I had a pretty high base training and I was in better fitness than the year before. I just wasn’t expecting it to be that drastic of a difference.”
Etheridge, who has been coaching at Santiago since the fall of 2014, said that Blade has had “several extremely phenomenal workouts” this season, including one in which she ran 5:09, 5:08, 5:04, and 4:52 in four repeat 1,600-meter efforts.
He added that the workout was typical for Blade in that she ran progressively faster during the training session.
“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Etheridge said of Blade’s record run in the Woodbridge Classic. “I told someone before the race that she could run 15:20 or faster.”
His confidence was bolstered knowing the watch Blade wore during the Cool Breeze Invitational at the Fairplex in Pomona on Aug. 31 indicated her 15:47.9 course-record clocking came on a 3.06-mile course, rather than the official distance of 3.0 miles. If the course was truly longer than advertised, her time would have been about 11 seconds faster on a three-mile layout.
Blade took recruiting trips to Northern Arizona, UCLA, Stanford, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida State before committing to FSU, where she plans to pursue a double major in exercise science and sports marketing.
She is happy with the great start to her senior season, particularly since the IT band issue nearly led her to shelve the outdoor track season last spring after she had run in only a handful of races.
After winning the Division I title — and leading Santiago to its first team crown — in last year’s CIF Cross Country Championships, Blade had run personal bests of 10:03.88 in the two mile and 4:46.54 in the mile while finishing third and fifth, respectively, in the Nike Indoor Nationals in New York City in early March.
However, she began to experience pain on the outside of her upper right leg after those performances and her discomfort became great enough that she was forced to curtail much of her running in favor of cross training for a few weeks.
Although she managed to run 10:06.93 while placing seventh in the girls’ 3,200 meters in the Arcadia Invitational in early April, it wasn’t until she ran 10:25.35 in the Southern Section Division I Prelims four weeks later that she felt like she was finally heading in the right direction.
She followed that performance by winning the Division I title in the Southern Section Finals with a time of 10:14.97 and the Southern Section Masters Meet in 10:15.00 before finishing third in 10:06.26 in the state meet on May 25.
Blade could have viewed her effort in the state championships as a disappointment compared to her sophomore year—when she slashed nearly 19 seconds off her personal best to claim the state title in an upset win with a 10:02.19 clocking.
But she doesn’t look at her third-place finish that way.
“Just getting to the state meet after everything I had dealt with during the season was a huge accomplishment for me,” Blade said about last track season. “I remember talking with my parents on the way back home and saying I wasn’t even expecting to be here four weeks ago… I said, ‘The fact that I made it here and medaled, I am so happy right now…’ I had one of the biggest smiles because I had gotten to that point.”
She then capped her season by winning the 5,000 meters in 16:18.17 in the Nike Outdoor Nationals in Eugene, Oregon, on June 12 before finishing fifth in the 3,200 in 10:18.50 two days later.
“That 5k was her end game,” said Kim Blade, Rylee’s mother. “She knew she wasn’t as fit as she would have liked to have been for the state championships. But that 5k at nationals gave her more time to train and get in better shape.”
Etheridge says that Blade’s endurance and VO2 max numbers — which measure cardiorespiratory fitness — are “off the charts.” But her attention to detail is another characteristic that makes her a special runner.
Blade is disciplined whether she’s in the gym improving her strength in her core, arms, and back; eating healthy; staying on top of her school work; or getting plenty of sleep, he said.
Blade’s drive and competitive nature have built her strength — particularly her core strength, he said. She can hold a plank for an incredibly long time, and last summer Blade won a contest at the cross country team’s training camp in Big Bear Lake when she did 1,160 consecutive sit-ups.
“She just kept going,” he said. “She ended up with a rug burn on her back because she did so many sit-ups.”
A disciplined athlete and 4.0 student who is nice and caring, Blade is one of a kind, Etheridge said: “Everything she does in her life revolves around her being the best runner she can be.”
Blade admitted her schedule is often structured around running, but she also makes time for “normal” things, like hanging out with friends, doing seasonal activities, and going to the beach.
Although Corona is about 35 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, Blade can name a list of beaches that are a 35- to 60-minute drive away if traffic is good.
She says Huntington or Newport are the beaches she and her friends like for enjoying a bonfire at night. Laguna is the place to go for scenery. And for a longer trip, they can travel south to San Diego or north to Malibu.
She enjoyed surfing when she was younger, but she’s done little of that in recent years after she sustained a gash over one eye that required stitches when another surfer’s board hit her.
“I’d say 85 to 90 percent of what I do revolves around running, but I also want to be a kid and just be the best version of myself.”
Being her best also has meant developing a sense of kindness, respect and humility in how she moves through the world, she said.
“I feel like how you treat people is a sign of your character… I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to be arrogant. If I’m not being a good person, I feel like I failed. If I was ever purposely mean to somebody, it would make me feel bad as a person.”
Kim Blade said that she and her husband, Dean, always told Rylee and her older brother Tyler, a baseball player in his freshman year at Cal Poly Pomona, that it’s just as easy to be nice as it is to be mean, and they took those words to heart.
Kim feels a sense of pride when other parents comment on how Rylee congratulates fellow competitors after they have finished their races, that she has no sense of cockiness because she is a standout runner, she said.
Kim and Dean are also big on setting and writing down goals because seeing them every day makes achievement more likely.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Rylee has a vision board in her room where she has written down numerous goals to accomplish in her running career.
One of those includes qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials — most likely in the 5,000 meters — in 2028. Another involves making the Olympic team in 2032. While the automatic qualifying standard for the women’s 5,000 meters for this year’s Olympic Trials was 15:10.00, more than a minute faster than Rylee’s current best, Kim said she wouldn’t bet against her daughter qualifying for the trials in 2028.
“Why limit yourself on anything,” Dean said of Rylee’s long-term ambitions.
Despite that optimistic comment, Dean knows Rylee has had her share of ups and downs while developing into one of the top prep distance runners in the U.S.
“I’ve learned a lot from running,” he said. “The highs can be really high. But the lows can set you back and put you in a tough spot. But she’s been very resilient.”
That resilience was tested in the Nike Cross Nationals meet in Portland last December.
After winning the Division I title in the state meet, Rylee was expected to contend for a top-10 finish in the individual race in Portland, and she and her Santiago teammates were also regarded as potential top-10 finishers in the team battle.
However, she and another teammate slipped and fell to the ground during their first step of the race on a muddy, rain-soaked course, and by the time they regained their footing they trailed a pack of 200 or so runners.
To complicate matters further, she and her teammates’ shoes were outfitted with short spikes—fine for a dry course but inadequate for maintaining traction on a sloppy one made worse by the previous boys’ race.
Blade said there were times when she could feel herself slipping backwards as she tried to ascend uphill portions of the course. Nonetheless she managed to finish in 76th place with a time of 19:00.5 over the 5,000-meter layout at Glendoveer Golf Course as Santiago placed 19th in the 22-team field.
She had placed 158th in 19:42.4 while competing as an individual qualifier as a sophomore.
“I kept making up ground on people, but it just wasn’t enough,” Blade said. “For the most part, I was catching people, but I was just too far back after the start to catch up to the people in the front group.”
Despite the disappointing finish in a race that she and her teammates had been pointing toward all season, she said, “I definitely learned that if anything like that happens, you’ve just got to do your best to get back into it and not be too hard on yourself.”
Although Blade says she’s grown immensely in her ability to handle the physical and mental challenges of distance running since she dropped soccer to focus on cross country and track as a freshman, she still feels she has a lot to learn.
“I’m always trying to take each thing I’ve learned to help me race my best because I feel like every little thing I do—whether it’s the extra crunch, the extra rep, the extra interval or whatever—sets you up for a good race.”