This Saturday the Marquette men’s and women’s cross country teams will find out where they are as a team when they compete at the Wisconsin Inter-Regional Meet in Madison, Wis.
Coach Mike Nelson said his runners will have their hands full with some of the best teams in the country.
The men’s 5-mile race features 11 teams and four of the top 30 teams in the country, including tournament host No. 4 Wisconsin-Madison. The women’s 3.1-mile race features 11 teams and seven of the top 30 teams in the country, including No. 10 Illinois.
Not only will the stiff competition force Nelson’s runners to run faster if they wish to be competitive, but the flatness of this weekend’s course should make everyone faster.
“Sometimes in a cross country race you can be on uneven ground. When that’s the case it’ll slow you down,” Nelson said, “but this (weekend) is going to be like running on a golf course. When that’s the case things are faster. I expect many of our athletes to set personal bests.”
The flat course is all well and good, but senior Anna Weber prefers her courses to present the worst possible conditions.
“My favorite is for the course to be as hilly as possible,” Weber said. “I think that’s real cross country: hills, turns and mud.”
In addition to the short supply of hills and mud at this weekend’s event, Weber’s expectations for her teammates and herself are limited, as well.
“Course conditions will determine times. We all have paces that we run in practice, but Coach (Nelson) always says to never give yourself an expected time because you may run 40 seconds faster or a minute and a half slower,” Weber said. “In cross country, it’s more about being competitive and going after the fastest girl.”
While Weber heads into the weekend with open-ended expectations, freshman Connor Callahan heads in with a set expectation.
“I want to try to break 25 minutes. I don’t know where that’d place me, but I know there are going to be a lot of ranked teams there,” Callahan said. “This weekend is going to be a whole new ballgame.”
The whole new ballgame led Nelson to reserve any predictions or expectations for how his teams will do Saturday. He does expect his men to learn from their competitors and the women to compete hard in hopes of earning at large points for the NCAA Championships.
“This will give our men, many who are very young, an opportunity to see firsthand what it takes to be a top team,” Nelson said. “I think our women will be right in the thick of things. This will give them a great opportunity to race against some high level competition.”
