3,000m Recaps: Hasay Becomes A Legend, Heath Unleashes His Legendary Kick
By: LetsRun.com
March 12, 2011
Women's 3,000m: Hasay Becomes A Legend
College Station, TX - Jordan Hasay got
over the hump in the women's mile by winning her first NCAA title. In
the women's 3,000m, she crowned herself a star. 24 hours after
being outkicked by Villanova's Sheila Reid
on the anchor leg of the women's distance medley relay, Hasay turned
the tables on Reid, pulling away on the final lap to win in 9:13.71. Making Hasay's win all the more impressive was the fact she did it just one hour and forty minutes after winning the mile final.
Hasay's double wins gave us a sense of déjà vu, as two years ago at Texas A&M, there was another Duck, Galen Rupp, who went into the meet being viewed as "the runner who can't win the big one with a kick" but came out being viewed as "totally unbeatable." Hasay isn't quite viewed as totally unbeatable, as she didn't quite pull of triple wins like Rupp did, but she totally changed the perception of her. A fantastic weekend for Hasay to say the least.
The slow opening pace left a lot of women in contention. The field was stacked as, in addition to Hasay and Reid, it contained Jackie Areson
of Tennessee, the 5,000m winner Friday night. When they really started
running the last half mile, all of the favorites were still there.
At the bell, it was a three-woman race.
Hasay was in the lead with Lucy Van Dalen
of Stony Brook right behind her and Reid outside of Van Dalen. On the
backstretch, Reid tried to pull up even with Hasay but Hasay held her
off and appeared to have thwarted Reid's challenge. However,
this race was not yet over. Reid hung close and mounted a challenge
coming off the final turn. Hasay intelligently drifted slowly into lane two, then lane three, making
Reid run wider as at the finish line, Hasay was in lane three and Reid in lane four. A third of the way down the homestretch, when Hasay was really digging, she glanced to her right to see Reid, one step behind her on the outside. Hasay would indeed have to go all-out to the finish, but in the end, it would be totally worth it. Van
Dalen stuck to the inside but could not muster enough speed to pass in the
hole in lane 1. Hasay stayed about a meter ahead of Reid to the finish
and put her hands in the air to celebrate her second NCAA title in a few
hours.
The stats show that Hasay and Reid were pretty evenly matched over the final lap, as Hasay closed in 30.30 to Reid's 30.31, but this time, the running Gods smiled on Hasay and rewarded a runner for having the lead at the bell.
Hasay
was running solely for pride and perhaps a bit of redemption versus
Reid, as Oregon had already secured the team title. The night before,
Reid had left Hasay in tears after the DMR. Tonight, Hasay had a big
smile on her face and was very pleased with her accomplishments and the
team title. As she was Friday night, she was philosophical and
acknowledged that with Reid, the battle could go either way, as she is a
great competitor.
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Final Lap Women's 3,000m |
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Jordan Hasay Reflects On Her Incredible Weekend: 2 Individual Wins And 1 Team Title |
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Men's 3,000: Elliott Heath Blasts Away From A Strong Field
With
a record 20 competitors having auto-qualified for the mens 3,000, many
were wondering if the large field size would cause some problems. The
answer would come in the first five seconds of the race, as
Oklahoma State's German Fernandez didnt make it out of the first turn.
Fernandez,
who was the NCAA champion in the 1,500 outdoors as a freshman, had his
shoe stepped on in the first few meters of the race and when it came
off, he ended up just jogging off the track. Had Fernandez gone down,
the race likely would have been restarted.
With
18 men racing on the track (there was one DNS), many thought the race might go at an honest
pace, but just the opposite happened. The race was slow throughout, as
the 1,600 was reached in just 4:31.01 (4:32 is 8:30 pace) and 2k reached
in 5:34 and change.
No
one was throwing down and it seemed as if the race was setting up for
the guys with the big mile credentials, like Minnesota's Ben Blankenship (3:54 split on the DMR the night before), Indiana's
Andy Bayer (3:53 split on the DMR) and Oregon's Matt Centrowitz, who had outkicked all of the collegiate athletes in the UW race to qualify in February, as all of three of them were near the lead.
However, with roughly 140 meters left in the race, it was clear who had the best finish on Saturday, as Stanford's Elliott Heath, who is better known for being a 5k runner (13:29 PR), exploded with
a kick that instantly was lethal. The moment he accelerated, it was
clear no one was going to catch him. His 26-second final 200 was way
better than everyone else's, as he won by nearly a full second and he
didn't really turn it on until the backstretch.
Heath,
who came into NCAAs undefeated individually for the year before
finishing fifth in the 5k on Friday, won his first NCAA title in
8:03.71, as Blankenship was 2nd in 8:04.65, Bayer third in 8:04.70 and
Centrowitz fourth in 8:04.88.
Iona's Leonard Korir, who won the 5k in a new NCAA meet record on Friday, was sixth in 8:05.76.
Afterwards, Heath said his focus coming in was on first winning the 5,000m and he was disappointed he could not hang long enough to try to unleash his kick. Tonight, he said he got caught up in some of the early jostling and had blood running down his legs after the race, but said he was used to racing Blankenship going back to his freshman year of high school. Heath added he wanted to go strong when he did as he knew that Blankenship would try to hold him off if he could before the turn. Then Heath didn't know if anyone was coming from behind, so he powered all the way to the finish. In actuality, no one was near him, as he crushed the field in the last 140m. Of the 18 runners that finished the race, only one of them, seventh-placer Andrew Poore of Indiana, could come within one second of Heath's final 200 split, as Poore finished in 27.21 to Heath's 26.29.
Andy Bayer finished third and we talked with him about his strong weekend (2nd the night before in the DMR with a 3:53 split). He said that in the DMR, he actually thought he was going to win, as he was hoping Miles Batty had used his final gear to help them pull away from the chasers, but Batty had one more gear left.
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Final Lap Men's 3,000m |
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Elliott Heath On His First NCAA Title And His Beastly Kick |
Andy Bayer After 3rd Place In 3,000m: Talks About That, The DMR, And The Indiana Program |
Note: We can only use race video footage for 48 hours and are limited to 2 minutes a day. So if you don't see race footage above, that is why.
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