MIAC CC 2007

NYU 68

Haverford 71

NC 90

UW Stevens Point 140

Augustana 175

Wheaton 215

Oshkosh 217

top 20ish under 25, top 90ish under 26. Perfect conditions. I cant remember too many individual results. I think NYU had 3 in the top 6 and Haverford went 3,4

No website has results yet. Frustrating...

complete oshkosh results

http://www.titans.uwosh.edu/MCrossCountry/2007/BrooksInvitational.html

Obviously his first race back is going to be significantly slow, and there is great opportunity for relatively quick improvement, etc., but 27:40 on that course is probably 28:40 at Como, so he has quite a bit of catching up to do in just two weeks if he wants to make much of an impact at conference. I'm not saying it's impossible for him to score for St. Johns and help the Johnnies cause for the team title, but I think top 15 is a very ambitious goal for him if his race today is representative of his running fitness level. I'm sure he is fit from cross training, and it must be frustrating for him to not be able to perform how he is both capable and accustomed to running.

It's frustrating that neither MIAC team came close to challenging ranked teams:

7th 213 UW-Oshkosh (35)

8th 233 Washington (33)

13th 318 Macalester

15th 336 Bethel

Top MIAC runners

21 Greeno, 24:59

34 Gladitch, 25:15

42 Burns, 25:24

46 Mudry, 25:36

58 Braam, 25:39

66 Ekstrom, 25:46

68 Hinrichs, 25:47

Lots of PRs today, but Wegmann was way off his game with 26:30 on a super fast course. But even if he was their runner, they wouldn't have touched Washington.

Hard to say how those performances would compare to the Drews race. Overall Mac seems to be improving. Would they have beaten Hamline today? If they can get back to a tight 20-25 second 1-5 spread, they could have a good shot at challenging Hamline for third. Bethel really needs 3-5 guys to step up or they'll be looking at no better than 7th.

For the first time I agree with something fastnbulbous said: the MIAC was underwhelming today at both Jim Drews and Oshkosh.

SJU needs someone to step up if they're going to challenge for a trophy at NCAA's. In no way am I counting them out (let's look at last year...) but I think we are all expecting more out of them this year. Hamline is still extremely inconsistent and now on the outside looking in for a trip to the national meet. Mac has some talent, but I still feel are sitting in 4th after today, maybe their road 5k took it out of them... As for Bethel I am surprised at how mediocre Greeno ran after taking some scalps early in the season.

st olaf ran as well as expected and everyone else underperformed? someone must have ran at carleton or still run for them. did you expect hamline or sju to run better? i dont think hamline is as good of a team as people want them to be. and sju ran about as expected, although I am really surprised at how mvb ran. 27:40 on a relatively easy course is not good. even with just cross training, he should easily be able to break 27. but conference is still 2 weeks away, and running ability returns pretty easily so ill bet things will improve drastically for him. hes got a solid endurance base from this summer and all the cross training, so i bet hell be all-conference in two weeks.

the oshkosh course is fast, times are probably 30-45 seconds faster there then jim drews so nothing too exciting from that race.

good to see ericksen close to sigl in the race results. was it a dogfight the last mile? anyone have any splits or how did the last 200 meters pan out?

I wouldn't call Greeno's performance mediocre. He improved 20 seconds from the same course last year. 21st is excellent with all the highly ranked teams.

Aside from #5 guy having an off day, I'd say Mac did well, just not great enough to break into national ranking. Even taking in account better weather this year, their performance looks better than Carleton's last year:

46 Quentin Kennedy 25:51

62 John Nowinski 26:06

70 Ryan Martinez 26:12

77 Eamon Monaghan 26:16

81 Mikeal Brucker 26:19

Still waiting for Carleton's results from Portland.

get real wrote:

st olaf ran as well as expected and everyone else underperformed? someone must have ran at carleton or still run for them. [Eh??] did you expect hamline or sju to run better?

Yes. Both ran better previously.

the oshkosh course is fast, times are probably 30-45 seconds faster there then jim drews so nothing too exciting from that race.

Hm, add 40 seconds to the times at Oshkosh and you have 4 Mac guys still ahead of Hamline's #1 runner Ian Bauer, and team outscoring Luther. That seems pretty good, but who knows, hard to say what the conversion is.

hamline hasnt ran well this year so i wouldnt say they underperformed.

you could say mac would beat luther, but based on last year, it is pretty obvious luther doesnt run hard until the end of the year. their top guys didnt run "fast" until conference, regionals and nats. i dont think they put it down like most teams until they really need. just an observation from last year when they got a new coach. well see what happens this year.

I heard that Vanbruggen was running the race as a test run and planned to go out easy and try to finish hard. His time was still terrible though. Don't expect any impact from him at conference or beyond.

sumitup wrote:

hamline hasnt ran well this year so i wouldnt say they underperformed.

you could say mac would beat luther, but based on last year, it is pretty obvious luther doesnt run hard until the end of the year. their top guys didnt run "fast" until conference, regionals and nats. i dont think they put it down like most teams until they really need. just an observation from last year when they got a new coach. well see what happens this year.

Hamline ran better at Griak. Perhaps it's debatable whether their performance was strong enough to get them into national rankings. If you're comparing them to their division championship team last year, they graduated half the scorers, so no comparison. It's a different team, so I'd hesitate to apply the logic that they tend to win division and then choke at nationals just as I would avoid saying Luther will always run their best at nationals.

Anyway, Carleton won the Pioneer Open, as would be expected with the field. More fast times:

2 Joe Sepe, 25:20

3 Quentin Kennedy, 25:23

9 John Nowinski, 25:46

11 Andy Jahn, 25:50

15 Charlie Gamble, 26:01

18 John Davis, 26:08

21 Mark Felice, 26:13

Without knowing the other teams, I have no idea if they're inching closer to St. John's or not.

You and Jim Drews, above, are making the same, easy mistake: you are assuming that a competent, cautious coach like Tim Miles told Mitch Van Bruggen to run all out in his first race of the season after coming back from anemia. The chances of that happening are basically zero. it's a safe bet that Mitch is in much better shape than this race shows.

read the rest of the post. If you did ,you would see that I said hell be all-conference in 2 weeks because running ability returns fast and he trains more than anyhone in the miac.

looking at the results and 1 mile split breakdowns, it is obvious that, at least luther's top two guys, werent really racing it. their first mile split was 530. it really grabbed my attention ,when everyone around them was between a 450-510ish first mile. looks like a pretyt conservative start. hard to know for sure, but you think they will bring it on at conference and beat wartburg? not sure if they have the depth though to make a return trip to nats, although I bet the top 2 guys will be top 10 at regionals.

Looks like St. Thomas ran pretty well over the weekend also, the course is the NAIA championship course if I remember right, also where they hold footlocker regionals. It's probably along the same difficulty as Como, not quite as easy as all the other MIAC teams had on Sat. Anyone know if St. Thomas and MAC are doing that 5k again this year?

Good call "Mile split," I also noticed Busche & McKay's 1st mile splits. I seems worth noting that the rest of their team appears to have employed a very conservative game plan as well. For example, Bruns (their 3rd runner) split a 5:44 in the 1st mile, while averaging 5:26 for the entire race; Switzer (their 4th runner) split a 5:33 for the 1st mile, while averaging 5:27 for the entire race; & Johnson (their 5th runner) split a 5:45 in the 1st mile, while averaging 5:29 for the entire race. This is a team that scares me, even though I think it's fairly obvious they don't have the talent they had last year. Having said that, I do think they will beat Wartburg at their conference meet & I also think they will qualify for nationals. Pasche's teams have always raced well when it counted...even when they did not have the talent that Luther's runners have.

Greeno beat Butzler in their first two races and today he beats Greeno by nearly a minute. I would say not quite on top of his game in comparison to St. Olaf and Griak, but still a solid race. He is still clearly in rock solid form and has improved mightily over last year.

As for Drews times, I would say 20 seconds faster than Como? Not too much more...Comparing to old Miac times, I would say Erichsen is making a case as one of the top MIAC runners in quite some time. Based on last year's track times, I would say his 14:28/9:01 makes him Better than Hooley's 2003 time of 25:32, better than Kreger's 2002 time of 25:19...this could easily be argued.