BRIGHTON — While Fort Collins’ Miranda Benzel created a big enough lead in Friday’s Class 5A Region 4 race to comfortably begin shifting her focus to creating a strategy for next week’s state cross country championship, Poudre senior Collin Munoz had more pressing concerns.

Munoz didn’t get the lead until the final 100 meters, when he out ran Fort Collins’ Clif Campbell in the final stretch to win the 3.1-mile race at the Adams County Fairgrounds in a time of 16-minutes flat.

“It was probably the hardest race I’ve ever had,” Munoz said. “That final stretch was long, I hate that stretch. I’m glad I had enough at the end.”

Munoz won the Front Range Conference meet last week along the same course, where Campbell finished fourth. Munoz expected Campbell to come out determined to take Friday’s title, and Campbell held a small lead through most of the race with Munoz pacing himself a few yards back.

But in the final stretch, Munoz made his move and was able to pass Campbell and earn a 5-second margin of victory.

“I knew this race was going to be so much harder than last week, because Clif was going to come back stronger than ever, he was going to want it more,” Munoz said. “So I knew when he made a move, I just had to stick with him and hope I could out-kick him.”

Loveland won the boys’ team race with 55 points. Other teams qualifying for the state meet are Fort Collins, Monarch, Poudre and Rocky Mountain.

Benzel lead the Lambkins to a regional victory in the girls’ division with 35 points, and Legacy (70), Rocky Mountain (72) and Monarch (109) and Poudre (160) also qualified for state.

In last week’s conference meet, Benzel had some runners try and stick with her and she won by only 12 seconds. On Friday, Benzel completed the course in 18:26 and her next closest competitor was her teammate, Kirsten Follett, who finished 1:10 behind. “It felt really hot to me because last week it was really cold, it was so different this week,” Benzel said. “I felt better last week. But this week was definitely harder mentally, because it’s a lot easier when I have someone pushing me who I know is better than me, because I’m competitive that way. But I knew it would be my teammates behind me, and I wanted to be the one pulling them along.

Benzel, who is predicted to be one of the top finishers in the Class 5A state championship race, used the time in the race to think ahead as to what she will have to do next Saturday to be successful.

“I was trying to follow the (pace) bike today, because I know that next week at state, there will be a couple of girls who may be ahead of me and so I was just trying to tell myself, ‘I have to stay with them,’ ” she said. “But this was a great race, and I feel pretty good heading in to next week.”