Official 2015 Heps XC thread

C/M Runner wrote:

Any idea on when Awad will debut? Penn has Paul Short AND Notre Dame this weekend, and then the Princeton Invite on 10/17 according to their schedule. The next race after that is Heps.

"Oh yeah, I'm racing in two days. Almost forgot" — @AWAD_of_TOM September 30, 2015

He'll race at Notre Dame-- they'll take the top 7 there to try to score some Kolas points and then I'd bet they run some, but not all, of their guys at Princeton.

I wouldn't be surprised if Awad only runs ND-Heps-Regionals-NCAAs. He was pretty burnt out at NCAAs and USAs last year and with his senior year and the possibility of a Trials spot/pro contract waiting for him next summer, Dolan would be smart to race him as sparingly as possible.

viewing Paul Short results. I know Gold is done by now, but no results posted yet...

Megan Curham won the open race by 17 seconds, running the wet 6km in 20:16.

Cornell had a lot of ladies in the open race too.

https://twitter.com/LehighPaulShort/status/649962533604954112

Women's gold results. Cornell 2nd (1st American team):

http://runhigh.com/2015RESULTS/R100215AE.html

Not sure what to make of the Paul Short results. Did anyone run their A-teams? If so, Columbia really s--- the bed. If not, have we seen their A-team anywhere yet?

fairly cold where i am wrote:

Not sure what to make of the Paul Short results. Did anyone run their A-teams? If so, Columbia really s--- the bed. If not, have we seen their A-team anywhere yet?

Columbia ran their A-teams at the Princeton Inter-regional meet on Saturday. Both teams finished 3rd in their respective races. Both had great low scoring spreads - men had 17 seconds, women had 32 seconds in the cold and windy conditions at Princeton. Rutherford finished 3rd individually in the men's race.

Princeton also ran their A-teams as well. The women won by having 3 women in the top 10 (they need their fifth runner to do a bit better before Heps as they had a scoring spread of over a minute), and the men finished 2nd, besting a number of ranked schools. They had 2 in the top 10, led by a frosh.

Thanks. For whatever reason the Princeton meet was off my radar.

Good runs from both Princeton and Columbia. This probably makes them the slight favorites, with Dartmouth the dark horse for a win. Will we see a match-up of the 3 schools before Heps?

I think so as all three plus Harvard are scheduled to be at the Wisconsin adidas Invite on 10/16. That will be a fun matchup to follow.

This upcoming weekend will be light: Columbia at the Metro Champ at VCP (guessing more of the Paul Short crew will be there), while Brown and Yale at the New England Champs in Boston (unlikely for it to be A squads as they are scheduled for Pre-Nats on 10/17).

First takes from the Wisconsin results as they come in- Columbia absolutely exceeded expectations and now looks like the team to beat in the Ivy League, Dartmouth had a couple guys who did well at Beantown have rough days (Adams in particular), and Princeton for the first time in years has serious depth problems. They are relying on a lot of young guys and got absolutely destroyed- 674 pts and a big 1-5 spread for 31st overall.

Considering how the adidas men's race was such a pack until just after the 6km point, I was wondering how much it hurt Princeton for staying back early on? I feel that the guys who were up there at the 4km point definitely had the scoring advantage, and none of the Princeton guys I could tell were in the top 75 at that point.

Great race for Myjer of Columbia though.

C/M Runner wrote:

Considering how the adidas men's race was such a pack until just after the 6km point, I was wondering how much it hurt Princeton for staying back early on? I feel that the guys who were up there at the 4km point definitely had the scoring advantage, and none of the Princeton guys I could tell were in the top 75 at that point.

Great race for Myjer of Columbia though.

Wisconsin men's results are here:

and women's here:

Below are the men's Ivy teams. Columbia had 3 in before any other Ivy team even had 1 in. They are likely a little worried that #5-6-7 are so far back. I wouldn't declare them the champs quite yet. Princeton was awful today but beat Columbia two weeks ago. Plus Penn and Cornell are at Pre Nats right?

Heps is a totally different race. Remember in 2012, Columbia was 5th at Wisco and Princeton just 14th. At Heps, the final score was :

1. Princeton, 26

2. Columbia, 58

Now admittedly that year at Wisco Columbia was only 9 second per man better than Princeton versus 26 today but again Princeton beat Columbia two weeks ago. And Princeton isn't having the meet at home this year.

But what if O'Toole runs? Is O'Toole (4;01 in HS) ever going to race xc for my alma mater (Princeton)? I know he's a track guy and a huge recruit but he's already redshirted one xc season. They could use him. Plus I know he's run at VCP before.

10. 361 Columbia ( 24:17.0 2:01:24.8 0:53.4)

=================================================================

1 19 Aubrey Myjer SR 23:52.5

2 43 Tait Rutherford SR 24:07.7

3 58 Jack Boyle JR 24:14.8

4 87 Sam Ritz FR 24:23.9

5 154 Max Norris JR 24:45.9

6 (219) Ryan Thomas SO 25:30.5

7 (235) Brian Zabilski FR 26:03.9

25. 572 Dartmouth ( 24:32.2 2:02:41.0 0:15.2)

=================================================================

1 98 Curtis King SR 24:27.0

2 101 Joey Chapin JR 24:27.7

3 104 Brian Masterson SR 24:28.2

4 127 Daniel Salas JR 24:35.9

5 142 Peter Geithner SR 24:42.2

6 (167) Julian Heninger JR 24:52.5

7 (185) Nathaniel Adams JR 25:00.7

31. 674 Princeton ( 24:43.3 2:03:36.2 1:02.3)

=================================================================

1 72 Michael Sublette SR 24:18.2

2 90 Noah Kauppila SO 24:24.9

3 117 Steven Sum FR 24:31.9

4 186 Jeremy Spiezio FR 25:00.7

5 209 Kenan Farmer SO 25:20.5

6 (224) Sam Berger SR 25:31.5

7 (244) Wolfgang Beck SO 27:06.7

32. 754 Harvard ( 24:47.8 2:03:58.6 0:47.3)

=================================================================

1 100 Tom Purnell SR 24:27.4

2 130 Ben Huffman SO 24:36.8

3 138 Chris Allen SR 24:39.6

4 182 Brandon Price JR 25:00.1

5 204 Louis Colson SO 25:14.7

6 (206) Austin Gilbert FR 25:16.8

7 (238) Tyler Spear SO 26:14.2

I'm posting some stuff we had in the Wisco thread about Myjer. CONGRATS dude. Where did that come from?

After that post. We got a reply.

Some good more nuggets of wisdom from yesterday. We think it was Dartmouth's first defeat of Princeton in xc since 2005. That's hard to believe. But at 2005 Heps, Dartmouth won and Princeton was 2nd. Jonathan Gault doesn't think it's happened since.

As for Aubrey Myjer, I've been told he fell, got spiked and spotted the field 10 seconds at 2k at Princeton. Had he had a result like yesterday, Columbia would have beaten Princeton in that meet as well.

Any thoughts on how pre nats results compare to the teams that raced at Wisconsin?

Did awad / penn race?

Bary wrote:

Any thoughts on how pre nats results compare to the teams that raced at Wisconsin?

Did awad / penn race?

Penn went to the Princeton XC and won both team races. It looks like the men beat a very strong Villanova, who had Tiernan, Williamsz, and Deneault go 1-2-3. I'm not 100% sure if this was Villanova's A-team as I don't know who their normal 4th or 5th guys were. Awad did run, but he was Penn's #2 as Nick Tuck was 4th overall. 23.2 second scoring spread for Penn men. It's pretty darn cold here in PA (high in the mid-50s).

I haven't seen the full PreNats results yet. I can barely read the Twitter images that letsrun posted, but I think Cornell's Ben Rainero was 11th overall. I read elsewhere on Twitter that he was co-leading the race early but not sure at what point in the race.

Also, rojo/wejo, the Wisco results were updated and it looks like Dartmouth's Peter Geithner was 51st overall, so he was Ivy #3 finisher. Still - Columbia got 2 in before anyone else.

IMHO, Princeton has had a tight scoring spread all season. I think that in a smaller field like HepsXC, it will cause more damage in the team scoring and they still have the advantage in the team race. I think Princeton just got really bad positioning at Wisco. Columbia has the better low stick with Rutherford, and if Myjer can continue this progress at HepsXC, the Lions will really have something going for them, but their odds for me are still less than 50%. They will need their 4th and 5th men to really step up if they want the team title to go in their favor (> 50%).

Cornell was 14th at Pre-Nats-- same top 5 as Beantown but their number 2 runner there Connor Herr (8:53 SC pb, 24:16 on FP) was only their number 5 at Pre-Nats. My sources tell me there was a pileup near the start and many runners fell; he might've gone down harder than others.

Monster race from Rainero-- 11th overall ahead of Moussa and Pearson from Colorado and certainly an All-American caliber performance. Similarly to Myjer, talk about someone who's putting together an impressive senior XC season. It's kinda dumb to compare 8k times across courses, but FWIW Rainero's personal best before this year was 24:29 on Princeton and he ran 23:32 today in Louisville.

Good weekend for steeplechasers in general-- Heps steeple champ Nick Tuck was 11 seconds ahead of his teammate Awad at Princeton and only 6 behind the individual champ Tiernan. Look for the Quakers to be a strong sleeper for team champs in a few weeks.

Last but not least-- this season, Cornell's beaten Columbia. Columbia's beaten Dartmouth and Princeton. Princeton's beaten Columbia. Dartmouth's beaten Cornell. And Penn has dodged everybody. It's truly anyone's race and it makes for some damn good cross-country.

Where are people seeing Geithner finishing #51? That would put Dartmouth quite a bit higher in the team standings

Weird - one version of the online results had him at 51st... updated my recap now.

chaserofsteeples wrote:

Last but not least-- this season, Cornell's beaten Columbia. Columbia's beaten Dartmouth and Princeton. Princeton's beaten Columbia. Dartmouth's beaten Cornell. And Penn has dodged everybody. It's truly anyone's race and it makes for some damn good cross-country.

We'll probably end up writing a men's and women's preview but in my mind Columbia has to be considered the favorite for the men's title. 10th at Wisco is signficantly better than anything someone else has done this year. Yes they lost to Princeton two weeks ago but only cause their #1 guy fell.And yes they lost to Cornell in week #1 but they were clearly pulling a Wisco and running as a pack.

After that, one could make an argument that there is some way all of the other teams except for Brown and Harvard could win . Cornell (14th at PreNats) had the next best showing this week and seems to be the #2 pick but Princeton (beat Columbia at home, was nationally ranked until this week), Dartmouth (beat Cornell at Boston), Penn (beat Nova last week), and Yale (only 5 secnods down of Cornell at Pre Nats) all probably are still drinking the Heps Kool Aid.

Should be a fun weekend.

In another thread, someone said Rainero might upset Awad and become Cornell's first heps champ since Bruce Hyde. At this point, I think it's an upset if Awad wins over the field whereas at the beginning of the year, I would have said the opposite. Awad's senior year is reminding me of Bruce Hyde's. All Awad can do is 'fail' as he was expected to win and that's a tough spot to be in. That Cornell team was way better Bruce's senior year (as is Penns') but Bruce was not. Awad didn't seem to be himself outdoors at NCAAs and hasn't looked like the Awad we all have admired for the last few years. He's in a real tough spot. You rise through the ranks to become the dominant Ivy League guy but then the next logical jump it to become a dominant NCAA guy and that's a wide gap to have to try to get over.

It's hard to repeat. The last few juniors to win haven't won as seniors - Chris Bendsten, Michael Maag. Of course Maag had a good excuse as True was coming back from his year off.

But Heps is a different ball game than a large invite. You are basically packing up and running in a pack against your peers. It will be interesting to see if the return to VCP makes things different or if NCAA xc is officailly a 5k jog and 3k race.

rojo wrote:

It's hard to repeat. The last few juniors to win haven't won as seniors - Chris Bendsten, Michael Maag. Of course Maag had a good excuse as True was coming back from his year off.

But Heps is a different ball game than a large invite. You are basically packing up and running in a pack against your peers. It will be interesting to see if the return to VCP makes things different or if NCAA xc is officailly a 5k jog and 3k race.

Don't forget Harvard's Dan Chenoweth and Princeton's Donn Cabral. Cabral beat Chenoweth in Chenoweth's senior year the last time it was at VCP, and then Cabral came 3rd behind Ethan Shaw and Kyle Merber in HepsXC-Snowmaggedon at Princeton the next year.