Friday, April 30, 2010

Y/N: Three Minnesotans Sub-3:45 at Stanford?

If the Peyton Jordan meet in Palo Alto had a tagline it might be "Where the stars comes to P.R." Many of the nation's top distance runners will show up Saturday at the Stanford meet ready to be towed along to fast times. Names such as Galen Rupp, Abdi Abdirahman and Shalene Flanagan are featured in the heat sheets.

13.1 Mpls

Hassan Mead used this meet last year to take his running to another level with a 13:28 heat-winner, taking down Evan Jager, Chris Derrick and German Fernandez. The 2010 edition of the meet has many Minnesota angles, especially on the men's side. We will focus on the 1500 with this question ...

Y/N: Will three or more Minnesota high school graduates break 3:45.00 in the 1500 at the Peyton Jordan meet on Saturday?


Donny Wasinger is scheduled for section five of the 1500. The Kansas Jayhawk competed for Winona Cotter in high school, where he won five individual state championships. Wasinger has a collegiate best of 3:49.03 in the 1500. The U of M's Andy Richardson, competing in section three, ran 4:10 and 1:51 at Irondale in high school and has run 3:46 as a Gopher. Rob Finnerty graduated from Burnsville in 2008 as the 7th fastest miler in history (nationally) with a 4:01 clocking. Finnerty recently ran 3:45 at the Drake Relays and will compete in section two at Peyton Jordan.

Section one of the 1500 is loaded up with many of the best collegiate milers. Among them are Minnesota's Ben Blankenship and Stanford's Elliot Heath. Blankenship won two consecutive 1600 state titles at Stillwater and ran a Gopher school record indoors with a 3:57 clocking in the mile. Blankenship's 1500 best in college is 3:42. Heath specializes in distances a bit longer than 1500, but he is no slouch at the shorter stuff either. When he competed at Winona in high school, Heath ran the all-time state record in the 2 mile - 8:46. Heath ran 3:43 in the 1500 at the 2009 version of Peyton Jordan and already has a 13:29 5k to his name in 2010.

Check out perhaps the apex of Minnesota high school distance running: The top four runners at the 2007 Minnesota state high school meet in the 1600 will all compete at Peyton Jordan. Blankenship held off Finnerty for the win while Richardson and Heath were third and fourth. Behind them were a few runners you may have heard of: Gopher great Hassan Mead in sixth and 13:41 5k runner Justin Tyner 15th.

To play our game, simply type "yes" or "no" into the subject line of an e-mail and send it to us at DtBFantasy [AT] gmail [DOT] com before 7:30 P.M. CST, Saturday, May 1st. Please put your answer in the subject line of the e-mail and make sure your full name appears somewhere in the e-mail. We will continue to offer a bonus for participants making their debut in Yes/No - a correct answer will be worth two points for any first-time players.

My answer: Yes

The question from last week was: Will seven or more records be tied or broken at the Hamline Elite Meet on Friday night? The answer was yes - nine meet records were set at the meet. Thirteen contestants answered correctly last week. The April Y/N winners with 3 points for the month were Chad Austin, Benjamin Melby, Rich Cowles, Lori Anne Peterson, Chris Marshall and Gregg Robertson. No one answered all four April questions correctly.

For all the results, please visit DtBFantasy Corner.

Good luck and thanks for playing Yes/No on DtB!

1 comment:

Doug said...

The correct answer is no. Heath and Blankenship ran 3:41 while Finnerty and Richardson finished at 3:48. Wasinger ran 3:53.
Results for the meet:
http://www.sml1.com/recordtiming/stanford/pjc10/pjc_res.htm