Badgers And Pre Nats

Their B team always runs at La crosse. I'm going to guess it's the same this year.

their A team is not running at Pre Nats

I'm sure their guys are bummed to be missing out on a free bus trip to Terre Haute.

I talked to the Wisco head coach Mick Byrne when I was out in Madison. He doesn't see the point in running a really fast paced, large field, championship style race before the championship part of the season. He thinks the NCAA qualifying system encourages team to peak twice and he would rather run smaller more controllable meets before getting into the three important ones (Big Ten, regional, NCAA).

The adidas Wisconsin Invite was exactly what he wanted. A decent small field. his guys are training hard and making them go out and run a really hard race like pre-nats, I think he's hesitant to do that. Note, Dave Smith kind of does the same thing at OK St and so is Jason Vig at UVA.

I'm not quoting Byrne exactly here but if I were to answer your question of why Wisco isn't going to Pre Nats, that's basically the way I understand it. There are a number of coaches who don't really like the idea of Pre Nats right in the middle of what should be sort of strength building time of the year since you're peaking in mid/late November but then a number of them do.

Cheers

I imagine a lot of teams that go, don't like it either, but if there is a chance you won't be top 2 at regionals, it becomes a balancing act with training goals versus a qualifying point system with no subjectivity for who the best teams are. If you are one of the top few teams at pre-nats you can probably accomplish your goals without a mini-peak, but you are right for a lot of teams, they almost have to do two peaks to take a shot at qualifying for the NCAA meet down the road.

They'll auto-qualify for nationals and most of their runners know the course. If they were, say, 5th in Great Lakes, they might have had to run.

Thanks #1

Here is a nice preview of their race this weekend and where the team is at. Ahmed may run and we should see if Finnerty can rebound.

http://www.uwbadgers.com/sport_news/mxc/headlines/story.html?sportid=195&storyid=19351

hayward102 wrote:

I imagine a lot of teams that go, don't like it either, but if there is a chance you won't be top 2 at regionals, it becomes a balancing act with training goals versus a qualifying point system with no subjectivity for who the best teams are. If you are one of the top few teams at pre-nats you can probably accomplish your goals without a mini-peak, but you are right for a lot of teams, they almost have to do two peaks to take a shot at qualifying for the NCAA meet down the road.

I presume this is from someone with interest in Oregon, a team in generally similar circumstance with Wisconsin. The very good teams have an additional option which is to run hard as part of their heavy training but not to treat it like an important race. This means that you might get beaten by some teams that you would otherwise beat but if you are going to get in anyway, then it does not matter.

An additional consideration is that going to PreNats involves travel, which is never a plus in itself. In a way, it is easier to come from a ways away because you fly, whereas Wisconsin would travel by bus. Staying at home to run the close-by invites and then having a very low-key meet the next week at home to test someone that you want on a place where you can closely measure what they are doing is another advantage of what Wisconsin is doing this season and what Oregon has done in the past.

As noted in the piece cited above, a couple of key guys will get a test - Peacock, Bolas and freshman Mohammed Ahmed. The biggest interest will likely be in Ahmed, who is running his first race. He has come off of a break after a very late track season (winning the PanAm Jr 10,000 IIRC), then he has a slow build up because of Ramadan. I would guess that the real target for Ahmed is NCAAs, with Big 10s and Regionals important sidelights (and if he runs Big Tens I would be surprised to see him at Regionals).

Bolas and Miller both have as their primary work in XC gaining enough conditioning/endurance to do 8 and then 10kms. Clearly, Miller had a ways to go two weeks ago, when he started fading badly at 4k (as did their steeple guy).