STOUGHTON INVITATIONAL
From 1979 to 2002 we attended the Fond du Lac Relays on this weekend. When they moved that meet to a Friday we switched to Stoughton in 2003. It’s been a good meet for us the last 9 years with 4 firsts (05, 08, 09, 10) and 5 second place finishes. The Madison area schools always provide good competition, the course has been fast, and we’ve always run well here. This is our chance to post some good times so we let our guys run on relatively fresh legs for the first time this season.
A review of our last 9 seasons shows that most of our guys run their fastest times of the season on this course. Today however the course, the race, and our times were slower than expected. It was odd to see only 8 guys under 17 minutes in a 19 team meet. It was unusual for us to run a slower average time than last week at Manitowoc (16:40 to 16:49). In most years we have averaged 10 to as much as 34 seconds faster. Course and weather conditions vary, but today was a great day, 55 degrees and sunny with just a light wind. Other than some odd flag placements the course was in good shape as well. They did add some yardage in the first quarter mile, so the course may be a little longer than in past years. This may account for one of the slowest opening miles I’ve seen (5:17) as no one seemed to want to take the pace.
Our guys were in very good position off the start, looked good at the mile, moved up a little in mile 2, but struggled to hold on in mile 3. With a half mile to go we were winning by what might have been 10 points or more. Then the Lafollette 3, 4, and 5 runners moved past our 4, 5, and 6 runners and passed a few others to edge us by 3 points. This is a meet we could have won and probably should have won, but Lafollette had their full lineup together for the first time this season and they raced well. We had a few bright spots but overall we did not look like the team we thought we would be by this point in the season. We clearly have more work to do and some of our guys need to get rid of their colds. Most of all we just need to gain the experience that will allow us to race well consistently. We have come a long way with this group but we are not yet a finished product.
Anderson had our best race of the day. He beat the Baraboo runner who beat him at our meet by 15 seconds and was within 3 seconds of the Memorial runner who beat him by 25 at Wausau. Sheibley had a good race but found himself in the middle of a 20 second gap with no one to race. Weisbrod made a good mid race move and fought hard to stay in touch with Lafollette’s 5th runner. It was a great effort, a P.R. and the first time Jake has been a scorer for us.
Our J.V.s ran well considering they had raced in some very tough conditions just 35 hours earlier at Rosholt. This is always a challenge physically and mentally and explains why 17 of our 28 guys ran slower today than they did on a tougher Manitowoc course last week. Hansen had his 3rd good race in 8 days, lead from gun to tape, and posted a P.R. Yonash had a very good race and Krutza broke 19 for the first time. It seems that our seniors did a little better than the younger guys handling the 2nd race in 3 days. Others with good efforts were Hladke, Summers (didn’t miss the race this time), Sorenson, Jackjones, and Kaesey Chojnacki.
Our trip south today was a bit of a disappointment. Not because we lost but because we didn’t run as well as we are capable. Lafollette is a little better than we thought and maybe we aren’t as good as we thought we were. We fell short of our expectations and it hurt a little. We learn from our successes but sometimes we learn more from our failures, and I hope that is the case today.