Terre Haute! Terre Haute!

Time: 70:00
Distance: 11 mi.

NCAA Div. I South Central Regional XC Championship

Target: make nationals, run smart.
Race: team 2nd; 14th in 30:18.

We accomplished our goal of qualifying for nationals with no trouble as we just had to beat Texas A&M who finished with nearly twice our score. Our team race wasn't quite as strong as I think we were hoping for though with Kyle and Jake a little bit back but Leo and Erik ran very well taking 3rd and 4th. Jake and I ran together through 3 miles, about when we caught Kyle, and I ran away from them a bit.

I ran the conservative race plan well, but the way the race shaped up, I was running nearly alone for the last 4 miles. There was a pretty strong front pack that Jake and I were off by the first mile and we were in no man's land trying to catch them. In the last 2 miles it really felt like I was almost running a tempo, with almost no one to run with and knowing that we had the nationals bid locked up. Definitely could've closed much harder, which I will have to get ready to do in 10 day--this wasn't even the effort of the Big 12s race for me. Went through the first mile in 4:50, second in 9:41, fourth in 19:32 (4:51ish pace), not sure about the rest but if it is a full 10k (there are questions about the distance) I would've averaged 4:53s (meaning that the last 2 miles were slow).

Bottom line: we're headed to Terre Haute, and I'm especially looking forward to giving both Arkansas and Oklahoma State another run.

With Jake near 2 miles...

and starting the second loop

1 Arkansas  37    5    6    7    9   10   27   41
Total Time:  2:28:59.10
Average:    29:47.82
2 Texas     52    3   4    12   16   17   19   44
Total Time:  2:31:00.60
Average:    30:12.12

1  Shadrack Songok        Tex. A&M-Corpus        29:16.3    1
2  Francis Kasagule       Lamar                  29:23.4    2
3  Leonel Manzano         Texas                  29:30.7    3
4  Erik Stanley           Texas                  29:35.2    4
5  Matt Munoz             Arkansas               29:36.7    5
6  Chris Barnicle         Arkansas               29:37.8    6
7  Scott MacPherson       Arkansas               29:39.3    7
8  Joseph Simichimba      Lsu                    29:52.1    8
9  Tyler Hill             Arkansas               29:55.8    9
10 Festus Kigen           Texas Christian        30:04.3
11 Steve Magness          Houston                30:04.3
12 Shawn Forrest          Arkansas               30:09.5   10
13 Nava Luis              Texas-Pan American     30:15.3   11
14 Owen Washburn          Texas                  30:18.1   12
15 Samuel Kosgei          Lamar                  30:21.5   13

18 Darren Brown           Texas                  30:44.4   16
19 Jake Morse             Texas                  30:52.2   17
22 Kyle Miller            Texas                  30:58.5   19
49 Jay Heller             Texas                  31:57.5   44 

More coverage: TexasSports recap, full results, other NCAA qualifiers.

Also, it looks like the Brown men capped off a frustrating year with a great race at the Northeast regional race (or is it now the New England region?) beating the rest of the Ivys there, which I was very happy to see... looked like great races by Ari and Graddy in particular.

Photos courtesy of two awesome but somewhat conflicted fans.