The next big Wisconsin runner???....BRANDON BETHKE

Any idea what his last 200 in the 5K was? It must have been pretty nuts. I was too busy watching to take note, but he sure dropped the kid from UM like in one turn. Nice to be able to watch a meaningful meet in Madison for the first time in years.

lets hope he doesn't turn out as big as withrow!

bethke was a stud in high school so its about time.

Bethke has been impressive, but you have to remember that its indoors, no one really is all that serious about it. Wait until the summer and then we'll see. Eagon is still the best young runner on their team. He's worked through some injuries this past year, but he's experienced and he's come up through their system with Solinsky, Tegenkamp, Bairu and Nelson and has a good shot at making the 10k Olympic team.

its easy to forget wrote:

...and has a good shot at making the 10k Olympic team.

No he doesn't, sorry.

Bethke did already break Solinsky's school record for the indoor 3K.

john from mad city wrote:

Nice to be able to watch a meaningful meet in Madison for the first time in years.

Yeah, it would've been... but it was SOLD OUT!!

I am really disappointed.

i think people are pretty serious about indoors. yeah, it's not outdoors, but if it weren't serious, would john kosgei be running 3:59, would bethke be running 7:51, would a brown-less stanford distance medley team go out and run 9:31, would patrick smyth and kurt benninger be rockin the casbah? their training may not be as serious as it's going to be throughout the spring, but we're talking about the top collegiate runners and basically the top runners in the nation, and those kinds of athletes are always serious when they compete. that's why they're the cream of the crop.

Yeah I admit Eagon is totally talented however the 10k will be the deepest race in years. I can think of 10 people right now today who would go before him. Bethke however is on fire but it is a long long way to outdoor nationals, see how far he's dipped into his well.

I disagree. Nelson and Eagon do have a shot at making the team. Eagon was 9th at USATF in 2006 and Nelson was 9th in 2007. Nelson ran 28:04, and after the type of times that Eagon was putting up last year I think that its safe to say that he could have put up a good 10k time. The only runners in the 10k field that our probably better then those guys are Abdi, Rupp, Ritz, Torres and maybe Moran, McDougal and Carney. I'd have to think that Schumacher can get them running with those top tier guys by the trials. You never know in Championship races who's going to come out on top.

There are a good majority of athletes who are doing just as hard or harder workouts Indoors then what they will do Outdoors. They always "say" that they haven't really turned it up yet, but schools like Stanford, Notre Dame, Michigan, Georgetown, Villanova and other east coast schools are definetly very serious about their training for Indoor season and they run some really hard track workouts.

well because of the timing of meets and races and the long season, the hard part of training is when middle to long distance runners are cranking out those medium to long intervals in later winter through late spring. bob kennedy always said that the hardest part of his training was during this period, where he would do nutty workouts like a 3:58 1600m, 2:56 1200m, 1:54 800m, 54 sec 400m with 2:30 min rest between each interval. the summer is when they just try to keep smooth, loose, and do the occasional maintenance workout to keep them in top form and prime themselves do have good races. but yeah, i believe this is sometimes the hardest training period of athletes for the whole year.

Someone sitting next to me had his last 200m at 25.7

It was sick

will he still be a steeplechaser come outdoors? If he's got some good form he could tear it up.

he won big tens in that last year

Is everyone forgetting about Evan Jager?? I wasn't at the meet but I heard he went 2:30/1:52 in getting 2nd in the mile, he's a true freshman...sky is the limit for this kid.

track fan wrote:

Is everyone forgetting about Evan Jager?? I wasn't at the meet but I heard he went 2:30/1:52 in getting 2nd in the mile, he's a true freshman...sky is the limit for this kid.

2:30...i cure run a 2:30/2:05 in work out im not impress.

if it was a 2:05/1:52 then maybe.

I wish I had been able to get a watch on the last lap, which was as impressive as just about any that I have seen this side of Bekele. The Big Ten Network as a video clip where they show the top four after they have broken the already broken pack. Then they switch to the last lap and it looks like they sped up the tape; that last lap was FAST. One guy has 25.7 listed above; on another thread someone said 24 seconds which would not surprise me -- he is closing faster than the Wisco guy they show winning the 600 in 1:18.

bethke was 98th at NCAA cross..he's clearly taken a big step. 2 big ten titles in the same meet is no joke

10,000 is a little long for his taste. He was further up the pack in the 8000m races than in the 10,000s. However, this level of conditioning would probably have placed him higher. Also, they picked the wrong strategy for the wrong day at NCAA XC. They started a bit slower than usual; unfortunately so did the entire pack. Thus, people were not dying badly and it was too hard to work to the front and took a lot of effort to try to move up. OSU selected a better pace for enacting a similar strategy.