"Our plan was to get them here and get them some experience. ... To have Dani get back and bring us back, with 20 meters to go, was incredible.”
Mark Wetmore they both have "very strong egos" so "have room in their self-esteem for other people to be successful."
She asked her coaches to answer honestly and tell her if she was "fooling herself" and if she was "done". They told her to keep going and now she says she's the fittest she's been in years.
“I just want you to tell me if I’m fooling myself. Am I done?” she asked. “I’ve had a great career, and I can walk away from it. I don’t want to be that person who thinks they have something more to give and they don’t. I just want you guys to tell me ... I needed to know right there because I didn’t want to go on fooling myself. They both immediately said, ‘We believe in you. We believe that a year from now you can be a totally different athlete.’ I really needed to hear that at that moment. ... I hear it—people tell me I’m too old or my best days are past me. That’s too bad they think that, but it doesn’t matter what they think. I’m not running for those people. I’m 100 percent focused on what I need to do, and whether I make the team or not, it’s been worth the journey to try.”
Wetmore: "They did everything we asked them to. Maybe when I got back tomorrow and process it, I'll decide I should have asked them to do something else. But they did their jobs. ... I'm proud of the women, proud of the men," Wetmore said. "Wish we had 10 less points on the men's side, but I know they ran their hearts out."
After getting sick early in the season, Saarel hadn't raced in a Colorado uniform all year until Regionals. Wetmore: “All along, the decision has been: Can we win the nationals without him? And I decided that, with the national championship, a lot of people never have a chance to win one at all, so it’s a little bit a violation of the gods to hold out a pretty good guy. So we decided to plug him in.”
“We knew in both races there were formidable opponents, teams that would be better than they had been all season long. We knew that we had a chance to win both, probably a slightly better chance on the men’s side, but we definitely aspired to do the sweep and it happened.”
Mark Wetmore: "You'd be surprised how little we talk about that. I don't have any pep talks or rah-rah speeches in me. They know what's on the line. They know the kind of work it takes, and they know rah-rah stuff lasts 20 or 30 seconds and then there's 24 minutes (of racing) to go. They look into each other's eyes in early July, make an agreement and go to work."
Hear about his track aspirations for this year and how Colorado is going to start attracting more sprinters, throwers and jumpers. Also why he stopped coaching Jenny Simpson when she graduated.
John Mayer was the only journalist from a majorr our of state paper in Terre Haute.
“It’s is hard to be the favorites, it’s so hard to have the attention. It’s so hard for nine or ten 21-year-old men to keep their egos in check and they really did it. They were talking each other up the whole time. I think any one of would have sacrificed his day to have a bad day if it would have meant six good days for his teammates. So, that’s the biggest feeling I have. Pride, not for me but pride for them.”
Torres says winning NCAAs was something he dreamed about since high school: “I remember [Bob Kennedy] winning the NCAA [cross country] championship, and to me that was like winning the Olympic gold. The seed was planted early.”
Some interesting points on both sides and contrasting quotes from Oklahoma State's Dave Smith who has summer-long recruiting trips abroad and Colorado's Mark Wetmore who only recruits Americans.
Wetmore talks about what aspects of his coaching changes from year to year and what doesn't.
A great quote from Mark Wetmore who says, “They have to get better in their training volume, they have to get better in their training intensity, they have to get better in their training consistency. They have to get better in how they eat and how they sleep and the choices they make at 9:30 on a Friday or a Saturday night. They have to keep ramping it up year after year after year. In Division I there is no room for weakness. If you sneeze, five people will go by you.”
Blake Theroux led the Buffs with 24:23 (3rd fastest all-time on the course) while Erin Clark won for the women. *Daily Camera *Full Results
She got a sacral stress fracture back in March, but has been on the Alter-G for the last 5-weeks and solid ground since June 2nd. She'll do Chicago or New York.