The Palo Alto High School boys’ cross country team outran cross-town rival Gunn at the City Championship Meet on Tuesday, Oct. 28.

Senior Charlie Avis ran the 2.18 mile course in 10 minutes, 41 seconds, to take first place in the boys’ varsity race; Avis improved upon his time from earlier this season by 30 seconds.

Senior varsity runner Skyler Cummins finished in third place, running a time of 10:46. Cummins improved upon his previous time by 42 seconds in addition to running his second mile faster than his first.

“It was extremely good; I have not run that well all season,” Cummins said. “I ran a pretty conservative race. The second mile was definitely the best; I ran a big negative split.”

Varsity runners juniors Peter Wilson and Henry Jordan were next to finish from Paly in the race, running 11:10 and 11:23 respectively. Wilson finished in third place for Paly, and sixth place overall, while Jordan finished fourth for Paly and seventh overall.

“We ran as a pack, then killed at the end of the race,” Wilson said. “This is probably the fastest team Paly has had for a while.”

In the JV division, junior Alex Voet took first place with a time of 11:39. Junior Varun Kohli finished the race after Voet to claim second place, running a time of 12:12.

“It was really good,” Voet said. “We went out really fast and kept up with it. It was the best run I could have done, and Varun did [really] well too.”

Paly’s fastest frosh/soph runner was sophomore Brandon Dukovic, who finished seventh place overall in the race at 12:25.

“It was alright,” Dukovic said. “I moved up later in the race when I was about halfway through.”

Many of the varsity runners achieved new personal records or ran substantially faster times yesterday than they did in early September at the same course.

“A lot of guys ran fast and a majority PR’d [made personal records],” boys’ coach Joe Giannani said. “It was good to get out and see how they did.”

Though many of the runners have vastly improved, the coaches believe that the best is yet to come

“They’ve progressed as we’ve hoped,” boys’ coach John Welsh said. “They’ve been training through these meets and we haven’t started tapering yet. There is more to come.”

The boys hope to continue their improvement in the upcoming league meet on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at Crystal Springs.