After a 5th place showing as a frosh.
Puskedra came back today and ran to his potential, improving to the podium, 3rd place!!
Great race for the Duck, via Utah.
Congratz Luke.
After a 5th place showing as a frosh.
Puskedra came back today and ran to his potential, improving to the podium, 3rd place!!
Great race for the Duck, via Utah.
Congratz Luke.
Yeah what a gutsy race! Went out with Chelenga, then ran the second half of the race all by himself on a very windy day. Good to see him running well after his rough sophomore year.
3rd place and the top American finisher, well done!
I honestly thought he was reprising his performance against Sammy last spring, but the sucker held on! How he got that big lanky frame around the course that fast with no one to draft is beyond me. Some guys just have the "mojo" for cross.
does everybody count this as a big win for Puskedra over HS rivals Fernandez and Derrick? All three in the top 10! Definitely impressive. But I wonder if Derrick could have come out on top, assuming he was hanging back for the benefit of Riley and Heath. Still, he certainly was better than German today.
he looked good out there. was pretty funny when he was tucking in behind sambu
I thought Korir was going to pick him off the last two miles but Puskedra hung in there and kept hammering away. It's hard to run all alone at that pace and in that kind of wind. Impressive effort.
I nominate Puskedra to go for the A standard in the 10k come track. He ran 28:34 as a frosh for a reason.
I saw Luke run in Boise his senior year of HS. He ran 14:40's for a pretty tough 5k XC race all by himself at 3k feet. Running it all alone, i knew that he was a Stud. Today's race was quite amazing.... to run by himself in that wind the entire final 5k was very impressive. Great run!
good to see the big three all running well, and the order inverted! but derrick and gf were running conservative team races, so it will be interesting to see them race the five outdoors, if it happens.
sanchobaile wrote:
Still, he certainly was better than German today.
No.
Awesome running for Luke Puskedra.
by next year we could be talking the big four, if you remember correctly, mike was 24th today.
Luke was amazing, all 6 foot 6!
Does everyone forget Colby Lowe? He's a 2x top ten placer now at NCAA cross... people don't seem to remember that he was right with Puskedra at the NON 2008 2-mile, and that he was clipping Derrick's heels at NXN in 2007...
We should be talking about the big -five-, if you throw in Mike Fout.
i enjoy trolling wrote:
sanchobaile wrote:Still, he certainly was better than German today.
No.
Yes he ran a great race. But he will never lead Oregon to a NCAA X-Country championship. After listening to him on the Flotrack post race interview, it all bout his place and team second. He only care that he got on the awards stand.
Derrick and OSU guys could have run with him, but chose the team before themselves.
Maybe I'm wrong, I guess he went out with the leaders knowing his teammates could not run with him.
Puskedrsa ran the first 5K in 14:38 The Stanford and OSU top runners ran 15:06. They closed that gap to 7 second at the end.
To take a little quote from Diego Estrada's post race Flotrack interview, that OSU and Stanford freight train came rolling by.
Now that I typed that I realized that GF just got screwed by the media again.
When GF won the NCCA 1500m in 2009 Carol Lewis would only talk about Jordan MacNamera and how he needed to get one point for Oregon to win. So we got watch the 10th place finisher instead of the leaders during the race.
Today as OSU and Stanford top runners are dueling down the final strait away we get to watch 1st and 2nd hug in front of a fat gut.
It would have been fun to watch that freight train battle it out.
Colby is the forgotten one, the Fab five!
why do people think German held back for the team?? didn't look that way at all... Puskedra kicked his ass. it's fine, it wasn't a mile or 2 mile race or anything..
props to Puskedra, but he was 7th as a freshman, so this isnt necessarily new ground for him.
The Heros of the meet:
8.German Fernandez
17.Solomon Haile
28.Micheal Fout
These are all the guys that are tops on pathetic Letsrunners shitlists. All the posts about how Haile was so old, he'd never improve, Mike Fout will never be healthy or heard from again and the was a HUGE thread that was 90% dedicated to bashing fernandez and how he wouldnt even run at NCAA's or finish all american. Suck a D letsrunners, suck a D.
ps. I hate ferWAHndez
check that, Luke was 5th as a frosh
oldoldrunner, you have never been more wrong in your life!
Do you know Luke personally?
Congratulations Luke as he showed much more heart than Chris Derrick- both team were contenders for team title but Luke grabbed his pair and ran to win but can't say the same for Chris Derrick!