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.
