No one in D3 has beaten him this year, while they haven't traveled to meets, the MIAC circuit isn't exactly easy
He did beat Gregg from La Crosse so that is something. Assuming Gregg was tempoing/pacing that race or something, but Bati was still there the whole time.
Bati has been able to stick with anyone pretty easily and until La Crosse he destroyed them all over the last mile or two. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how he does with a faster early pace.
Bati hasn't really beaten anyone impressive (Ethan Gregg tempoing at Jim Drews doesn't count) - his best D3 win might be over Logan Bocovich, who seems like ~30th in the nation individually. He lost to Aspel Kiprob at Jim Drews, who apparently has a pretty quick half marathon, but whose track times are underwhelming. I don't see any reason to expect Bati to be much better than 15th.
Also, when you are comparing with the meets most teams at nationals have been racing at, the MIAC circuit is very easy.
The MIAC is decidedly top heavy this year. St. Olaf had a reasonable showing at Conn College, but no other team is close to being ranked. The top La Crosse guys ran together. It didn’t look like a tempo, but Ethan and Isaac looked like they were pacing some of their other guys to sub 25.
But, if Bati’s Strava is accurate he has been crushing long runs and training heavily with Minnesota Distance Elite. He will be well prepared to be a top five national runner.
D3 Glory Days really should do a feature on him. I’d like to learn more about his background and how Bati’s coach blends their training with his independent training groups. It’s a unique mixture but really working.
The MIAC is decidedly top heavy this year. St. Olaf had a reasonable showing at Conn College, but no other team is close to being ranked. The top La Crosse guys ran together. It didn’t look like a tempo, but Ethan and Isaac looked like they were pacing some of their other guys to sub 25.
But, if Bati’s Strava is accurate he has been crushing long runs and training heavily with Minnesota Distance Elite. He will be well prepared to be a top five national runner.
D3 Glory Days really should do a feature on him. I’d like to learn more about his background and how Bati’s coach blends their training with his independent training groups. It’s a unique mixture but really working.
Strava is not going to give you a great read on someone's fitness - at best it will provide a floor on how good they could be, but it is hard to find a ceiling based on strava. But from what I saw looking at his strava did not raise my estimation of what kind of shape he's in for an 8k. He had a couple of good long runs (23 miles at ~6 pace, 17.5 at ~5:50 are what I remember), but his 8k PR indicates significantly better aerobic fitness than either of those efforts.
The MIAC is decidedly top heavy this year. St. Olaf had a reasonable showing at Conn College, but no other team is close to being ranked. The top La Crosse guys ran together. It didn’t look like a tempo, but Ethan and Isaac looked like they were pacing some of their other guys to sub 25.
But, if Bati’s Strava is accurate he has been crushing long runs and training heavily with Minnesota Distance Elite. He will be well prepared to be a top five national runner.
D3 Glory Days really should do a feature on him. I’d like to learn more about his background and how Bati’s coach blends their training with his independent training groups. It’s a unique mixture but really working.
Strava is not going to give you a great read on someone's fitness - at best it will provide a floor on how good they could be, but it is hard to find a ceiling based on strava. But from what I saw looking at his strava did not raise my estimation of what kind of shape he's in for an 8k. He had a couple of good long runs (23 miles at ~6 pace, 17.5 at ~5:50 are what I remember), but his 8k PR indicates significantly better aerobic fitness than either of those efforts.
He did go ~26.2 @5:15 in June and 8k on the roads in 23:35 in March.
Strava is not going to give you a great read on someone's fitness - at best it will provide a floor on how good they could be, but it is hard to find a ceiling based on strava. But from what I saw looking at his strava did not raise my estimation of what kind of shape he's in for an 8k. He had a couple of good long runs (23 miles at ~6 pace, 17.5 at ~5:50 are what I remember), but his 8k PR indicates significantly better aerobic fitness than either of those efforts.
He did go ~26.2 @5:15 in June and 8k on the roads in 23:35 in March.
To be clear, I’m not saying he will be top ten or anything, I have no idea where his fitness is, but I don’t know that there’s anyone with more upside potential in the whole field.
For the most part, I wasn't seeing any surprises at the conference meets this year. Two that stood out as a little more chaotic on the mens side were the UAA and NESCAC meets. In the UAA, Emory took down Carnegie, which was a small surprise to me, but a much bigger surprise was WashU falling to fifth. This is shocking for a team that last fell out of the top 2 at the conference meet in 2009. They came in ranked 12th and lost to the 29th ranked Chicago squad. While WashU's spot in the national meet should still be safe, if they have another day like today, I would expect them to fall out of the top 20, at least. UChicago's at large bid will receive a serious boost from taking down WashU - around 20th seems like their ceiling, but they looked better today than they did a couple weeks ago at Auggie. Their transfer portal addition John Hood has really stepped up for them and seems well-positioned for a solid American finish.
At NESCACs, Colby beat Middlebury. Middlebury came into the season with high expectations, and after struggling through their first few meets, seemed back in form with a third place finish at Conn College, three places ahead of Colby. Two weeks later, the situations were reversed - Colby edged Midd by 2 points, largely due to a gap at the 4 and 5 positions. Middlebury clearly has a higher ceiling than Colby, but they've struggled to consistently execute. Even at their best though, it seems difficult for them to get into the low teens. Conn and Bates also reversed their ordering - I'm not as familiar with them, but barring a collapse at the regional meet, both seem in good shape to qualify on to nationals.
Oh, and the OAC saw Otterbein, Wilmington, and Mt Union go 2 - 3 - 4. No surprises at the ordering, but the scores were very tight - respectively 70, 77, and 79. When these teams met at Prenats, Otterbein and Wilmington were far ahead of Mt Union, but Mt Union closed that gap at OAC. Mt Union is on the bubble of a qualification. Beating Wilmington at the regional meet would lock them in, which should be doable given Wilmington's weak five and the deeper field at regional meets - beating Calvin would probably also work. If they can't get past at least one ranked team at their regional meet, they will just have to hope the committee likes them compared to Amherst and UWEC.
PP, Williams, rpi, MIT, north central, wartburg, CMS, Emory, John Carroll, case western, Colby, middlebury, st Olaf, haverford, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, suny geneseo, la crosse, whitewater
likely teams (no order) - 9 teams:
Lynchburg, UC Santa Cruz, wash U, uchicago, stout, Loras, George fox, Wilmington, otterbein
bubble teams (in order) - 4 spots left:
Conn, Calvin, Bates, Mount Union, Central Iowa, Eau Claire, Oshkosh, Tufts, Amherst, St Lawrence, NYU
I’d bump Tufts ahead of Mt Union as Tufts was 30 pts ahead of Mount at the Conn meet and 1 pt behind Bates at their conference) but otherwise accurate.
Yeah I totally agree, I just figured I include all the teams with a hypothetical but slim chance. In reality the only bubble teams with serious chances are conn, calvin, bates, tufts, mount union, eua claire, and central. Conn and calvin are super likely as long as they dont blow up at regionals, it will really just come down to tufts mount union and bates for the last two spots. Maybe amherst if they have a huge day and beat conn at regionals, but I almost feel like that would more likely bump out both teams from qualifying. I was also going to include hope on this list, but theres no way they are going to take 7 (or even 6 teams) from one region
Bati cruises a casual 17 miler at 6:35 pace a day after running away with the MIAC title. The man ran over 100 miles last week. No chance anyone in D3 can hang with him. Sorry Alex. Sorry Ethan. Sorry Elias. Game over.
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