The summer season has yielded encouraging results for both present and former Marauders on the track and the triathlon course. Sophomore runner Connor Darlington claimed a provincial gold medal, and followed it with bronze, while approaching his personal best at the 1500m distance. Meanwhile, brothers Taylor and Austen Forbes finished fifth and 12th respectively at the National Sprint Triathlon Championships, and Marauder alumnus Lionel Sanders won his third race on the IRONMAN 70.3 circuit in Racine, Wisconsin on July 20.

Sanders produced a remarkable run to erase an eight-minute deficit after the bike and catch American Andrew Starykowicz for his second consecutive title, after winning the 70.3 event in Muncie, Indiana on July 12.

"Going through the banner was an awesome experience," wrote Sanders on his blog. "I worked very hard for this one. I feel it was by far the most hard-earned. It reminded me why I love racing: that feeling of not knowing who is going to win, while operating at full capacity. That is the coolest feeling in the world."

Darlington, who medaled at the Canada Summer Games a year ago, won the 1500m race at the Athletics Ontario Junior-Senior Championships in Ottawa, with a time of 3:45 that sat less than two seconds below his personal best. A third-placed finish in the 800m event doubled his medal count, and Darlington will now have the opportunity for further glory at the continental meet, the NACAC U23 Championships, being held in Kamloops, BC in August.

That event will mark the end of Darlington's summer track season, and he admits that he's eager to move to the trails.

"All of the intervals are starting to get to me," he says. "I still enjoy them, but I'm looking forward to cross, where you can zone out and put in 20-30 minutes of effort." The team environment of cross country training and competition will also allow Darlington a level of camaraderie that individual interval training makes impossible.

Members of the Marauder team will begin to reform in August, and the Forbes brothers return with encouraging results behind them. Taylor's result, finishing fifth overall and second among entrants under the age of 23, puts him in contention for a berth in the ITU World Triathlon Grand Final in Edmonton. After battling constant injury concerns for the past three years, Taylor is finally seeing the results of prolonged, healthy training.

He credits his brother Austen with keeping him in the sport, as tempting as an exit was while injuries held him back.

"If I didn't have my brother there with me, I don't think I would have come back," he says. "I was dealing with so many injuries and wasn't racing well, but he was always there pushing me. We've always had that competitive drive to be as good as one another, and without it, that probably would have been it for me."

Getting back to competitive health, and staying there, has been thanks in large part to the advice of Marauder head coach Paula Schnurr. She counselled the brothers to "listen to your body," and urged them to ease their constant, full-out approach to training.

"She had dealt with triathletes before, and she thought we were all crazy," says Austen.

Healthy and in good form, the two brothers are excited by the prospect of improving on what was a fantastic cross country season a year ago, one in which McMaster's men won OUA silver and enjoyed their best national performance since the turn of the millennium.

Despite the loss of Sanders, who leaves McMaster to pursue his burgeoning professional career, the brothers insist that the Marauders will boast "our best group ever." They point to the team's incredible depth, suggesting that any of 10 runners could score at a given race.

The question, as it is with any team, is who will emerge as the "low sticks" -- the runners who can crack the top 10-20 positions. Predicting where those performances might come from is "always a gamble," as certain runners are bound to surprise. Austen cites the example of teammate Blair Morgan, who emerged from his role as a mid-range scorer to grab seventh position, and an OUA First Team All-Star spot, at the OUA Championships in 2013.

Expectations bring new pressure for the Marauder men, who "were lucky to be considered in the top eight" nationally as recently as 2012. But the brothers insist that their team relishes a challenge, fondly remembering the cold, rainy conditions of the provincial course at Chedoke a year ago.

"The harder the better for McMaster," says Austen. "That's what we're hoping for again this year. It's going to be a little bit harder, so we're going to do a little bit better."