herbal T wrote:
To further reinforce the point, several (including Cole Sprout) ran faster 2nd halves than Nico. He ran a great race, but was coming back to the field in the second half, rather than closing on Mantz. He probably played it about perfect and any more of an aggressive start probably wouldn’t have gone well.
Semi-related to another thread where Nico and Ritz’s abilities were discussed...
As a true freshman, Ritz finished 4th and had the fastest last mile in the race. He was like 40th at the mile in 4:43, and basically maintained that pace throughout the race. I know someone that was passed by Ritz in the last 1-1.5 miles who said he was flying by people.
For those who don’t remember, or weren’t born yet, when Boaz hit the scene he was an incredible sight to see. He used to go out at suicidal paces. In this race, David Kimani- who ran 13:10 the summer before- tried to go out with him and ended up dropping out! I believe he had close to :30 on the field at one point.
1 Boaz Cheboiywo 28:47 EMU
2 1 Jorge Torres 29:06 Colorado
3 2 Alistair Cragg 29:10 Arkansas
4 3 D. Ritzenhein 29:11 Colorado
5 4 Luke Watson 29:19 Notre Dame
6 5 Ryan Shay 29:23 Notre Dame
7 6 Donald Sage 29:24 Stanford
8 7 Matt Tegenkamp 29:26 Wisconsin
9 8 Josh Spiker 29:29 Wisconsin
10 9 Travis Laird 29:31 N. Arizona
11 10 Alan Webb 29:38 Michigan
12 11 Louis Luchini 29:41 Stanford