The Bronco cross country team, fresh off their training trip to New Brighton State Beach, will run their second meet of the year in Sacramento on Saturday at the Hornet Jamboree.

Bronco head coach Felipe Montoro feels like the team is in good shape right now, but a little tired after training hard the last couple of weeks.  "We are looking forward to the start of the season for a number of runners as we continue to get more quality work in," said Montoro.

While in Santa Cruz, the team ran Nicene Marks State Park for three straight days.  "It was amazing," said Montoro.  "It is a really nice training environment. They have super soft trails, lots of shade. You can keep it flat or go hilly – it's amazing as how far you want to go running in those conditions and it's just 40 minutes from here."

Bronco assistant coach Pete Cushman expects most people that didn't race last weekend at USF will run this weekend.  "This is the opening weekend for a number of our runners," said Cushman.  "It's a good fitness test for our returners and for our freshmen that didn't race last weekend – it's a good test for them. It's an off distance for both – it's a four-mile loop for the men and a 5K for the women. It's a little bit shorter and that's nice for early season."

Cushman pointed out the core of women have been pretty solid.  "A lot of people, both teams, have come back more fit than they have ever been in their life," said Cushman.  "It's great to see a good solid pack of six or seven women working together that looked really good."

Montoro said the men are further along this year than in year's past.  "We are training harder than we have ever trained before," said Montoro.  "We told both teams that in order to be more successful this year, we needed them to put in the miles this summer.  They all stepped up and came back ready to work even harder."

Next week the Broncos will run send a split squad with some running at the WCC Preview Meet in Portland, Ore. on Sat., Sept. 14 and others running at the Gator Invitational in San Francisco on Fri., Sept. 15.