***ABBEY'S FIRST 10,000!*** - Tonight at 5:00 pm ET

I'm sure she'll run no faster than 33s for the 10k and win.. but that is a hard triple, all coming within less than 24 hours. She might have her first collegiate loss in a while! I don't think she's that much ahead of everyone else that she can pull off wins in all three. I'd be astonished if she did. I bet she'll win the 10 and 5 and by the time the 3 comes around, she's tired and it's short enough and other girls are fast enough that she could get beat.

sanchobaile wrote:

I'm sure she'll run no faster than 33s for the 10k and win.. but that is a hard triple, all coming within less than 24 hours. She might have her first collegiate loss in a while! I don't think she's that much ahead of everyone else that she can pull off wins in all three. I'd be astonished if she did. I bet she'll win the 10 and 5 and by the time the 3 comes around, she's tired and it's short enough and other girls are fast enough that she could get beat.

How is running a 33 min 10k "hard"?

Few or none of the others competing in the 3 will be fresh. They may all have taken a lesson from the two Cornell women who distance-tripled (and scored in all three races) last year.

What's the 10,000m qualifying time for USATF? That, and winning--maybe just winning--would likely be D'Agostino's only concerns in the 10. The 5 would be tough--going against some good people fresh--but I think Abbey could handle the 3, with everyone already tired.

Anyway I think that this development makes fainter the other teams' hopes of beating Harvard.

hngh wrote:

sanchobaile wrote:

I'm sure she'll run no faster than 33s for the 10k and win.. but that is a hard triple, all coming within less than 24 hours. She might have her first collegiate loss in a while! I don't think she's that much ahead of everyone else that she can pull off wins in all three. I'd be astonished if she did. I bet she'll win the 10 and 5 and by the time the 3 comes around, she's tired and it's short enough and other girls are fast enough that she could get beat.

How is running a 33 min 10k "hard"?

oh god yeah i forgot this is letsrun.. everybody runs 33 min 10ks in my sleep..

can you read? it's a hard triple. by the 3k it's gonna catch up with her at least somewhat.

All the letsrun women routinely cruise a 33 as well. Really not too difficult.

Perfect Heps mentality. Risk injury by running the three longest races for team points to get ... third? Fourth? Whoa, second! Right on!

I'm sure Abbey wants to do everything she can for the team - you can't blame her - but I think retaining her 5k title outdoors, and possibly going for another one (10k "surprise"?) will be tough enough without some Herculean, totally irrelevant Heps effort.

She may be "that" much better than the Heps competition right now, but she's not "that" much better than her national competitors - she should do what she can to gear up for NCAAs and to try to set some PR's in Europe over the summer while she can still run for Dartmouth.

Maybe I'm underestimating her, but I'm not underestimating the annual "Run stoopid for Heps" mentality.

Oops, forgot about USAs. Do those too. It would be a perfect time to steal a US title.

And don't get me wrong - I think she will be fine running her races. But she does risk injury, and I think it's far from ideal to run that way looking ahead at her summer. For the "elite-elites" it's a down year - but she's not quite there yet, and she could stand to have another breakthrough before going pro.

Nothing like giving up your 10k virginity in front of mom, dad and a slew of fans.

All Animal House alums should be proud.

I'm an Abbey D' fan...I'm surprised she is doing this and I think it's a bad idea. What does it accomplish? I doubt that Dartmouth women can win HEPS even if Abbey wins 3K, 5K and 10K. She should not risk injury by overdoing it before NCAA's.

another thing wrote:

I'm an Abbey D' fan...I'm surprised she is doing this and I think it's a bad idea. What does it accomplish? I doubt that Dartmouth women can win HEPS even if Abbey wins 3K, 5K and 10K. She should not risk injury by overdoing it before NCAA's.

I just don't get arguments like this.

1) I don't buy the injury argument that it's likely to lead to injury. The best season of Wheating's life si when he was running for Oregon and doing indoors/outdoors, etc. As a pro, he's always injured and running way slower.

How hard is it for her to win the 10kk? She's a 15:00 5k woman.

Now the issue is whether Cornell's Rachel Sorna is is #2 in the NCAA I believe in the steeple and a 15:50 woman wants to make Abbey work for it. They could both brutalize each other. But Sorna is doing the steeple, 10k, 3000 triple which is harder than what Abbey is doing.

If I'm them. I do as little work as possible. Gentlewoman's agreement until the last 1600. If Sorna wants to kill herself, Abbey could always let her go and pick up the 8 points.

2) Why would she do it. Plenty of reasons.

i) To try to help the team. Maybe they can win it. I haven't scored it but even if they can't 2nd is better than third, etc. The point of the meet is to score as many points as possible.

ii) To give her something new to do. After NCAA xc, Abbey has had zero motivation. She finallly accomplished a long sought goal. It would have been easy for her to go pro then. Now she's trying "not to lose" or simply do what she's done before. That's not exciting or motivating.

iii) To pick up the 10,000 qualifier for NCAAs. The NCAA record for individual NCAA titles in 9 (Kipyego and SFH) i blieve. Abbey has 7.

iv) Why not? I don't think it's that hard for her or likely to injure her. I basically don't accept your entire argument.

I'll be at the meet and let you know.

rojo wrote:

I'll be at the meet and let you know.

I'll post live updates here for those of you not paying to stream.

The results will show up here:

I agree with one thing you said, Rojo - that she probably won't get injured. The rest is what (respectfully) leads to some of the problems that NCAA runners have.

I think the Heps brings out some pretty stupid behavior in the name of competing for not-first. I've seen guys run on very questionable legs (*with full knowledge of coaches*) and just ruin their seasons. Obviously Abbey's not in that place, but I wouldn't risk getting involved in a slugfest in the 3k after 9 miles in spikes in 24 hours - with a bunch of 75's thrown in there. There's no way she's prepared for something like the OG/WC style distance rounds at this point (nor should she be). And she doesn't need to get "tougher" or something - she's plenty tough and confident. She should be looking out for Number One and the coaches should be the drivers behind that. But they aren't, as usual.

Go team!

Coogan, her coach, texted me as he saw my posts(Damnit, yet another elite that still reads the boards, I thought they were all gone. We tried to scare them all away).

Coogan wrote:

"Abbey will only run 3k if Dart can win meet. I'd never let her do 3 races otherwise. Last time dart won Heps 3k was won in 12:00 minutes. "

Which brings me back to my initial post. Why do it? To help the team and be a legend. Dartmouth has never won a heps in the competitive era. They won the first heps in 1977 when there were just 4 teams and it was a joke and haven't been close since.

If they could do it, she'd have 35 teammates happy for life, an AD happy, etc. The memory of that would be way bigger for her in 20 years than a ton of stuff - even ncaa titles (hells he's already got 7) - in her career.

I think it would be a VERY tall order for Dartmouth to get all of the planets and stars aligned to allow them the win for Outdoor Heps, particularly the strength Cornell and Harvard have (on paper anyways). Maybe if their throwers and sprinters manage to have a VERY good day... I'm skeptical.

That's good to hear. I wouldn't question Coogan or her if that's the approach.

Dartmouth has 3 girls entered in the 10km who do not have a time so far - D'Ags, Claudia Pham, and Hannah Rowe. Because of the strength of Cornell in this event and how they NEED to dominate this event in order for the Big Red to win the title, I believe the presence of Dartmouth in the 10km will only hurt Cornell and not Harvard. Harvard's strengths are in the sprints, hurdles, and throws (and they are projected to score high in those events as well). If Harvard falters in those areas AND Dartmouth can somehow get more green bodies than Red bodies in the scoring positions, then maybe, JUST MAYBE, Dartmouth could win the Heps title.

I did some more of the math out in another thread, but I can try to explain it here.

Here is the projection of the 10km race, based on known PRs for the people entered:

10k | 1 | Sorna, Rachel | Cornell | 33:34.59 | 10

10k | 2 | McMahon, Devin | Cornell | 34:03.20 | 8

10k | 3 | Reese, Emily | Harvard | 34:21.94 | 6

10k | 4 | Kellner, Caroline | Cornell | 34.38.32 | 4

10k | 5 | Simpson, Elizabeth | Cornell | 34:40.84 | 2

10k | 6 | Szpak, Maggi | Cornell | 34:51.61 | 1

10k | 7 | Hanley, Viviana | Harvard | 34:52.72 | 0

10k | 8 | Jhabvala, Kersie | Penn | 35:30.75 | 0

Team scores based on this finish (no relays):

Brown - 44.3333

Columbia - 91

Cornell - 117

Dartmouth - 84 (includes D'Ag winning 5km and 3km)

Harvard - 125

Penn - 29

Princeton - 76

Yale - 25

So, in the best case scenario, say D'Ag wins the 10k, 5k, and 3k. Say the finishing order in the 10k went as follows:

Dartmouth - 1st (10)

Cornell - 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th (17)

Harvard - 4th (4)

(this is is based on displacement of Cornell's and Harvard's runners for the 10k distance who are entered for Saturday).

The resulting scores would be as such for those three teams:

Harvard - 123

Cornell - 109

Dartmouth - 94

Having D'Ags in the 10km will help Harvard out by displacing the Cornell runners.

But then again, there are two other Dartmouth girls in the 10km who do not have times. IF Dartmouth goes 1-2-3 (which I feel is unlikely), Cornell going 4-5, and Harvard 6 (again, displacement), Dartmouth moves into 2nd but still a ways back from Harvard:

Harvard 120

Dartmouth 108

Cornell 98.

Read more:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5479455&page=11#ixzz31KQq3p7j

Rund al'Thor wrote:

That's good to hear. I wouldn't question Coogan or her if that's the approach.

Mark isn't reckless. I wouldn't expect Abbey to run any faster than to win or to run the 3 k if their chances to win the meet are impossible.

Rund al'Thor wrote:

I think the Heps brings out some pretty stupid behavior in the name of competing for not-first. I've seen guys run on very questionable legs (*with full knowledge of coaches*) and just ruin their seasons.

That makes no sense. If they already were injured they werent going to be able to do anything the rest of the season anyways so running at heps makes sense. For nearly everyone at heps. Heps is the equivalebt of the state meet for a hser. Its the whole point of the seaaon.

I wouldn't risk getting involved in a slugfest in the 3k after 9 miles in spikes in 24 hours - with a bunch of 75's thrown in there.

She doesn't have to wear spikes in the 10k. Nothing is stopping her from running in flats.

Aside from making an Olympic team this might be the last meet she runs in where team points actually matter. It's really cool to be part of a team and do everything you can to contribute to the success of a team effort.

I don't follow the times of college athletes that closely so I'm not familiar with how many girls are close to her in what events. What I do know is she has been very successful already on the national level, so competition wise I'm guessing her conference meet should be a cake walk? Is there anyone that can even hang with her? . Tripling shows a commitment to team, which I love to see in an athlete.

Good for her, I hope she wins all three.