NCAA D3 Pre-Nats results and commentary

It was very slow because it was 85 degrees, very windy, humid, and the course conditions were poor. Basically it was the worst day you could have picked for a race. Also, Saint John's (MN) didn't run their top guys Chris Erichsen and Kelly Fermoyle and neither did UW-LaCrosse with Paul Zdroik, so not to take away from Hird from North Central College, but he probably wouldn't have beaten any of those three. The course itself isn't too hard, but the grassy areas were soggy and muddy from the hard rains the day before.

6 6 Nathaniel Hird, So 9:15 15:35 24:59.1 North Central

17 17 Paul Zdroik, Jr 9:25 15:42 25:18.6 Wisconsin-La Crosse

This was last year at reigonals

63 Nathaniel Hird, So 28:23

83 Paul Zdroik, Jr 28:37

This was last year at nationals

Why would you say he wouldn't of beaten them???

thanks for the replies so far, i appreciate the info. seems odd to me that one day it would be rainy, and hot-humid the next!

for the record, i am not a representative of d3running.com as the "name" implies, just someone who enjoys the site and doing a little marketing for it.

it was a really sweet course though..i got really hot around 3 miles cuz there's no shade on the course, the heat really affected people the last couple of miles i think. a fun race though

d3running.com wrote:

seems odd to me that one day it would be rainy, and hot-humid the next!

Seriously? This is commonplace for most of the US. Maybe you live someplace so non-temperate that it doesn't work like this, but most of the world knows this as normal.

some reasons wrote:

It was very slow because it was 85 degrees, very windy, humid, and the course conditions were poor. Basically it was the worst day you could have picked for a race. Also, Saint John's (MN) didn't run their top guys Chris Erichsen and Kelly Fermoyle and neither did UW-LaCrosse with Paul Zdroik, so not to take away from Hird from North Central College, but he probably wouldn't have beaten any of those three. The course itself isn't too hard, but the grassy areas were soggy and muddy from the hard rains the day before.

I can think of a day that was worse.

for anyone who has ran the course prior to pre-nats, was it different? I heard they took out the back loop with the big hill. If there were changes, was there any talk of keeping the course this way or regionals/nattys?

Paul Zdroik is definetly in better shape than he was his last few seasons.

buy you a draaaaannnkkkk wrote:

for anyone who has ran the course prior to pre-nats, was it different? I heard they took out the back loop with the big hill. If there were changes, was there any talk of keeping the course this way or regionals/nattys?

Yes there were changes, they basically ran the womens 6K course then repeated the first 2K. Here are the maps...

This is a much better course at which to be a spectator. The men can be seen across the soccer fields four times. The final 400 or so can be seen from many vantage points with this layout. The big concern might be an overlap of some runners at some point after the loop in the woods. Most likely at regionals and not at nationals. I didn't hear how this went Saturday. As a spectator I love this layout.

We ran regionals at van cortland my sr year (D2) and we ended up doing 2 5k loops instead of the traditional 10k. Everyone thought it was a good idea but some of the slower kids (i mean really slow kids) were lapped. I remember comming down the home stretch and passing some kid slogging along thinking wow what is this kid doing varsity college athletics. We had a similar experience the year before at Franklin Park. I have this pic from the first 800 meters with this kid from Mercy College leading, i lapped him. There should be no lapping in cross country.