The lineup of 18-pacers includes Bernard Lagat, Chris Derrick, Andrew Bumbalough, Sam Chelanga and Collis Birmingham.
Women's race has Amanda Eccleston, Morgan Uceny, Nicole Tully, Heather Kampf, Cory McGee.
*Meet The Competitors: Drew Hunter Has 8 Siblings And Wants To Run An Ultra One Day
*Before He Was A Runner Johnny Gregorek Was A Baseball Pitcher And Has Been Dating His Girlfriend Since Sophomore Year Of HS
*Nicole Tully Once Competed In AN Oreo Case Race And Finished The Whole Package In 14-Minutes
*Donnie Cowart Used The Childhood Game "Red Rover" To Flirt With Girls "I would picked two cute girls to run between. I’d intentionally not break through, so I got to hold their hands!"
*Morgan Uceny Spent Her Childhood Summers Helping Her Mason Dad Carry Bricks And Mortar "I was working on my tan and my muscles simultaneously."
*A Whole Bunch More "Meet The Competitor" Features On The Sir Walter Miler Home Page
After back-to-back NCAA runner-up finishes to Cheserek, there is an obvious parallel between McGorty and Chris Derrick, who never won an NCAA title, but often finished runner-up to Lawi Lalang.
McGorty: “The longer you wait, the easier it’s going to be for Ches ... You can’t be intimidated by him. You have to run your own race. This time, he only pulled away in the last 100, and maybe that’s all he needed to do. But I’m trying to get closer and closer. Hopefully, at some point, I’ll be able to finish right next to him. The pressure is still on him to always win. It’s up to me to do what I can to disrupt that. Next year, he’ll be healthier, but I’ll continue to get better under Coach Milt’s training.”
Mo Farah, Chris Derrick, German Gernandez, Tariku Bekele, Zersenay Tadese, Imane Merga, Ibrahim Jeilan, Muktar Edris and more.
The men's field includes some top elites as well with Chris Derrick, Anthony Famiglietti and Tyler Pennel lead the way.
*MB: Chris Derrick running a half in Florida this weekend
Derrick lives with six BTC teammates. "Mo Ahmed, German Fernandez, and Ryan Hill refer to themselves as the “Enchilada Team,” but usually Elliott Heath and I will cook and they'll clean.
The once popular event now has many top runners skipping it, non-African countries not sending teams, and media barely giving it attention. Dathan Ritzenhein, Chris Derrick, Jordan Hasay, Ray Treacy and Brendan Foster makes some suggestions on what could be done to save World XC.
Men's team also has Bobby Curtis, Maksim Korolev, Ryan Vail. Women include Sara Hall and Jenn Rhines.
Ritz last ran in 2013 when he was 2nd, 6-seconds behind Chris Derrick.
"It’s a surprise to me that no one wants to host it. It doesn’t require a lot of infrastructure or anything. There’s some “I think the athletes, myself, other top Americans and Europeans need to make a commitment to show up and do it. If we’re not going to commit to it, the fans aren’t going to commit to it. I hope that top Americans and top Europeans will continue to do or come back to doing cross country."
Derrick's says do to some nicks he's not in good form now but hopes to be soon and he's dreaming big - real big - "My college teammate Garrett Heath just went out there and beat the world cross country champion. I never lost to Garrett in cross country, so if he can do that, I want to be able to do that, too."
*MB: Chris Derrick talks big: "I think I can run with anyone in the world."
Heath: “After the first lap no one was pushing the pace. I thought they were either waiting or tired, so I said to myself I will try and go for it."
Garrett Heath is back in the 4K against Dathan Ritzenhein, Asbel Kiprop and World XC champ Japhet Korir. Chris Derrick defends in the 8K while Gemma Steel leads the women's 6K.
Eric Avila was 5th and AJ Acosta 6th, both just over 4-minutes. Canada's Melissa Bishop won the 800 (2:00.06) as Erica Moore was 3rd (2:02.14) and Sarah Brown won the mile in 4:26.67 with NCAA 1500 champ Shelby Houlihan 6th (4:33.52).
Also in the field: Ben True, Ryan Hill, Chris Derrick, Caleb Ndiku, Hassan Mead, Cam Levins.
As always, there are great fields in all the events. Full Entries here.
"You kind of have these rare opportunities when everything comes together. You’ve got to seize the moment and take advantage of it," Shalane said. Up next Boston. It was the road debut of Derrick.