Mile is Featured Event at Snowshoe Open

The mile could well be the featured event at tonight's Snowshoe Open at the University of Minnesota. Several well known names are entered as the U of M men's team plays host to many of the MIAC schools in their last meet before next weekend's Big Ten Championships in Madison, WI. Sean Hartnett is scheduled to be there for DtB providing photos.

U of M All American Chris Rombough, Hamline's Brandon Gleason, the U of M's Eddie Kibira, and Dan Greeno of Bethel are all in the first heat of the mile, which is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. A full schedule and results of the meet are available on Apple Raceberry JaM's site here. Other meet highlights could be the men's 60 meters featuring U of M junior All American Ibrahim Kabia, who was third in last year's Big Ten meet. The 60 heats are right before the mile at 5:42 p.m. Kabia is in heat number three. The final is set for 6:30 p.m..

Tickets for the Big Ten meet are available at www.uwbadgers.com or by calling 1-800-GO BADGERS.

Parents Day Open at The Barn

Team USA's Emily Brown, fresh off a third place finish at the USATF XC Championships last weekend in San Diego, will be one of the featured competitors as the University of Minnesota's women's team hosts the final tune-up meet before the upcoming Big Ten Women's Indoor Championships that will be held here March 1-2. The women Gophers are currently ranked seventh in the USTFCCCA poll among Division I teams.

Michigan is ranked ahead of them at number 5 and Penn State is right behind at number eight, forshadowing an interesting tussle for the team title next weekend at The Barn. Tickets for the meet are available online at www.gophersports.com of via phone at 612 624-8080 or 1-800-GOPHER.

Because of the upcoming Big Ten meet, the U's middle distance and distance runners will skip the meet, avoiding a chance for Jamie Cheever, who has set U of M records three times this season, to meet Brown in the women's mile. Brown's best for the distance is 4:37, while Cheever set the school record February 10 at the Meyo Invitational running 4:39.54.

Field events get underway at 10 a.m. on Saturday, with the first running event at 10:45 a.m. The mile will be run in seven sections, starting at 12:10 p.m. . Brown will be running in the first section. The meet will also be a showcase for the MIAC schools, whose athletes make up the majority of the fields.

Lorraine Moller Inducted into New Zealand Hall of Fame

New Zealand's Lorraine Moller, who for a time called Minneapolis home, was inducted into the New Zealand Hall of Fame this week. Moller, who won the bronze medal at age 37 in the 1992 Olympic marathon in Barcelona, occasionally gets back to the Twin Cities to give a talk, but spends most of her time at home in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and now seven-year-old daughter.

She, along with Nobby Hashizume, formed the Lydiard Foundation in an effort to continue to spread the message of the late coach Arthur Lydiard, who she believes to have been the most influential coach of her time. Proper coaching, she told The Press of New Zealand, is vital to athletes. Mentors and coaches help guide the athlete down the proper path, she said. Athletes today are barraged with a lot of information, much of it damaging.

The key, she emphasized is being able to cut through all that and have a belief in yourself and your abilities. Athletes today are told that "everyone else is on drugs and that somehow we (who don't take drugs) are at a disadvantage," she said. "If I had bought into any of that, I would never have got what I got. People were saying the same thing 15 years ago."

Moller, like her former husband, the late Ron Daws, did things her way. As was Daws, Moller is generous with her time and knowledge. When I moved to the Twin Cities in 1972 Daws and Steve Hoag were kind enough to take a young runner under their wings. They shared information, ran together with me in workouts, and selflessly shared what they knew about the sport. The concept wasn't that we were competitors fighting over places in meets, but rather that we could learn from one another and make each other better.

Through the Lydiard Foundation, Moller aims to carry on that tradition. For the rest of what she has to say, the Press article can be linked to by clicking here. Another article and video done by New Zealand television can be read and viewed here.

Storm, Athletes Hit the East Coast

The AT&T USATF Indoor Championships are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in Boston, but a winter storm is making things rough for everyone. USATF is making schedule changes on Saturday to account for the fact that athletes are having a tough time getting to Boston.

Events involving Minnesotans are scheduled for Saturday night, so it shouldn't be a big issue. The women's 3K featuring Team USA Minnesota's Katie McGregor is given a 7:25 p.m. starting time. The women's 1,500 with Jenelle Deatherage is set to go off at 7:55 p.m. McGregor was third in the 3K in 2006. Her personal best is 8:59.64. Deatherage has a win and a runner-up finish already this season in the mile. She set a personal best last weekend at the Tyson Invitational and will be facing the woman who defeated her there, Christin Wurth-Thomas in Boston.

Kara Goucher will not be running in Boston. After a sub-par sixth place finish in Birmingham last weekend, Goucher said in an e-mail yesterday that she was feeling better, but had decided against making the trip to Boston. "I have started to feel a little better and actually had a decent workout yesterday," she said, "There will be plenty of 1500m races this spring where I can work on waiting until the end and then unleashing my kick! Today is the first day of my two week break, after this training will be very serious and LONG, so I am trying to enjoy this as much as possible. I am eating frosted flakes as I write this." Kara and husband, Adam, will take this time to visit family before they have to get back into hard training for the outdoor season.

In the pole vault, Tye Harvey, 2001 World Indoor silver medalist and 1998 grad of the University of Minnesota, is in the competition scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday. Harvey was the top ranked high school pole vaulter in the US in 1993 with a height of 17' 1" at Sonora HS in California. He came back from a broken wrist sustained in an auto accident in 1997 to take second in the US Indoor championships in 2000. He was also second in US Indoor Nationals in 2001 before taking the same spot in the World meet. He's remembered for his battles with Laurence Johnson, who won the gold at the 2001 World meet and a silver medal in the 2000 Olympics. Harvey has the sixth best height among those entered in this year's competition.

University of Minnesota grad Shani Marks, a two-time indoor and outdoor champ in the triple jump, will be attempting to add a third indoor title.

A side note here on the late posting of these items today. For some unexplained reason--computer glitch, site problems at Google--I couldn't get into the site until now to put up new posts. So while weather played havoc with the schedule in Boston, cyberspace disturbances did the same here. Apologies for the problems.

The USATF meet will be on ESPN2 on Sunday, scheduled air time is from 5 to 7 p.m.

St. Olaf Men's Coach to Retire

St. Olaf men's cross country and track coach Bill Thornton will retire from coaching after this season, the school's athletic director Matt McDonald announced Wednesday morning. Thornton has been at St. Olaf for three and a half decades, coaching track and field for the entirety and cross country from 1970 through 1984 and 1997 to the present.

During his tenure he has coached over a hundred Midwest Conference and Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Champions and nearly thirty All-Americans.

For more info on coach Thornton, you can click here for a site created by one of the student athletes he taught.

Photo Courtesy of St. Olaf

Daymont Honored

St. Olaf women's track and XC coach Chris Daymont(center) was honored along with volleyball coach Cindy Book(right), and basketball coach Tammy Metcalf-Filzen(left) Wednesday at halftime of the men's basketball game against Carleton for their contribution to women's sport as a part of the MIAC's 25 Years of Women's Athletics celebration.


Daymont has coached at St. Olaf for 27 years. She has mentored over 1,000 student-athletes, 30 of whom have earned nearly 80 All-America awards. In cross country, Daymont has led St. Olaf to eight conference championships, the second-most of any MIAC school. The Oles captured five straight from 1998-2002, and had their best NCAA finish in that stretch, fourth-place in 1999. Daymont's cross country teams have qualified for 16 NCAA Championships, the eighth-most in Division III. She also led three teams to the AIAW Championships from 1979-1981.

In track and field, Daymont was named NCAA III Central Region Coach of the Year three times, most recently in 1995. During the fall of 2002, Daymont was selected Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Coach of the Year for a second time.

Daymont says her best honor, however, has been the opportunity to coach her children - Sara Daymont Schwartz '01, an All-MIAC honoree, and Megan Daymont Thomas '03, a six-time All-America track and cross country runner.

Photo Courtesy of St. Olaf College

St. Olaf Sweep for MIAC Athletes of the Week; St. Thomas DMR honored and Team Jumps to Third in Division III Power Rankings.

White Bear Lake pole vaulter Amie Filmore, a sophomore at St. Olaf College, won her second MIAC Field Athlete of the Week honor this year by winning the event at Saturday's Lake Superior Challenge. She vaulted 11' 8", a new personal best and school record. The mark is also a provisional qualifier for the NCAA Division III national championships to be held March 14-15 at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio.

Fillmore's mark ranks on top of the MIAC vaulting stats this week and ranks her seventh nationally. St. Olaf men's team middle distance runner, Doboul Ruon won the MIAC Men's Indoor Track Athlete of the Week.

The St. Thomas women's Distance Medley Relay took the MIAC honors for Women's Athlete of the Week. They finished third in Iowa, running a NCAA automatic qualifying time of 11:44. 20. DMR Team members are: Kelly Russ(Wayzata, MN), Nikki Arola(Chisholm, MN), Erin Sprangers(Hill Murray HS), and Katie Theisen(Elko, MN). Three of the team members are sophomores, Theisen is a junior. The St. Thomas men's team jumped from number six to number three in the USTFCCCA(US Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association) Power Rankings behind team leaders Wisconsin-LaCrosse and North Central(IL).

For a summary of the awards and this year's MIAC schedule, click here.

Photo Courtesy of St. Olaf

Gleason Update

SI Faces in the Crowd member Brandon Gleason of Hamline finished 23rd in the 5K at Iowa State last Friday. His time was 14:56.92. It was his first race at the distance since coming back from being run over by a car during a training run over a year ago.

Garrett Heath Describes A "Stanford Sandwich"

Garrett Heath was the middle of a Stanford sandwich finish in the mile at the Husky Invitational last Saturday. A red-shirt junior at Stanford, Heath was outleaned by Stanford grad, Russell Brown, and a fraction of a second ahead of another Stanford grad, Olympian Gabe Jennings. Right behind the trio was Oregon freshman, Matt Centrowitz. It was an exciting race. After getting through his accounting midterm, Heath answered a few questions for DtB.

DtB: The Husky Invitational seems to be your lucky meet. You ran your first sub-four minute mile there last year. This year you went faster. Any reason things seem to come together for you in Seattle or is it just where the event falls in the indoor season?

GH: I think that it's mostly just where the meet falls in the indoor schedule and the number of fast guys that always show up for this race. There are only a couple of meets that we go to indoors, other than our conference, so it's really one of the only chances at running well to make nationals. Washington also does a great job at having a rabbit that will take out the pace for at least the first 800 or so, which really helps keep things honest. Other than that, I guess its just coincidence.

DtB: You joked last year that you had said that if you ever broke four for the mile, you'd stop running. Why was sub-four such a lofty goal?

GH: Sub four is just one of those barriers that I always dreamed of breaking when I was younger, but never really imagined I would ever do. I was always more of a long distance guy and liked cross country much better than track when I was in high school. I remember always getting out-kicked by Tom Schmidt almost every race my 10th grade year, and never really had the speed that I thought was necessary to run fast in the shorter races. It wasn't really until two years ago that I thought breaking four minutes was a possibility.

DtB: How did the race unfold this year? Looks like you had at least three Stanford guys leaning for the line at the end.

GH: The race itself started out pretty similar to last year, in that we had a rabbit that took us through the quarter mile in 57 and then slowed down and brought us through the half in about 2:00-2:01. I got off the line well and settled into about fifth through the first two or three laps. Once the pace started to slow down though, everyone started moving up, and I ended up getting pushed to the back. At the time I thought I was in last, but I think Matt Centrowitz was also back there with me. We ended up coming through the three-quarter mark in about 3:01. I didn't really have room to start kicking until the last 250 meters of the race, but I got lucky down the backstretch and found a place to move up. From there, the three of us from Stanford were pretty much stride for stride for the last 100 meters or so with Matt right behind us.

DtB: What's the plan for the rest of the indoor season? Outdoors? You said last year that you now consider yourself a miler. Is that still your view or do you think 5K will be better for you?

GH: I'm planning on running the DMR at our next meet to try and help qualify our team for nationals. We have a good squad of guys for it again, so it would be nice to get the qualifier out of the way and avoid going to a last chance meet. Other than that, I'm going to focus on getting ready for the indoor mile and maybe take another shot at the 3K after the DMR at our next meet. In terms of outdoors, I still do consider myself a miler rather than a 5K runner, but will probably do a little of both as the season goes on.

Photo courtesy of Stanford University.

Mandi Zemba Will Run Ekiden Relay

Team USA Minnesota's Mandi Zemba will run a 5K leg for the US team at the 26th annual Yokohama International Women's Ekiden Marathon Relay in Japan on February 24. Hers is the first leg of the 42K marathon relay. Last year defending champion Russia won the team title at the event with a combined time of 2:14:48 with a strong US team led by Athens Olympic marathon bronze medalist Deena Kastor taking second in 2:16:04, just in front of Japan(2:16:07). Last year's time was the fastest ever in the event for the US team. Team USA's Katie McGregor was on the team in 2007. She ran one of the two 10K legs, recording a time of 32:59, the fastest for the 5th leg of the relay. This year she will be running the 3K indoors at the USATF Indoor National Championships in Boston this weekend.

US team members are:

Leg 1 (5 km):	Zemba
Leg 2 (10 km):	Stephanie Rothstein
Leg 3 (6 km):	Delilah DiCrescenzo
Leg 4 (6 km):	Allison Grace
Leg 5 (10 km):	Alvina Begay
Leg 6 (5.195 km):	Stephanie Bylander

For music fans, leg three runner, Delialah DiCrescenzo, is the Delialah sung about in the Plain White T's song "Hey There Delialah."

Zemba finished 19th at last Saturday's USATF XC Championships in San Diego, running 24:28.03 for 8K.


Photo by Victor Sailer http://www.photorun.net/.

Ruon is MIAC Athlete of the Week; Multiple Athletes Get NCC Honors

St. Olaf freshman, Doboul Ruon, was named the MIAC Athlete of the Week after running a personal best of 4:17.84 for the mile at the Tostrud Classic. His time was close to the NCAA Divison III provisional standard for the event of 4:16. A graduate of Northfield High School, Ruon won the event at the Tostrud meet by a little more than a second over teammate David Green. The Division III NCAA Meet is March 14-15 at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. Ruon's time is the fifth fastest in the MIAC this indoor season with St. Thomas junior Matt Boumeester leading the list with a 4:15.56 at the MSU Open on February 2, according to the list compiled by Apple Raceberry Jam. For the entire list, click here.

Ramsey Kavan and Terry Liggins of South Dakota and Denise Mokaya of Minnesota State have been named the North Central Conference Indoor Track Athletes of the Week while Shana Brown of Nebraska-Omaha, Amanda Kunkel of St. Cloud State and Jason Beutz of Minnesota Duluth have been named the North Central Conference Indoor Field Athletes of the Week.

Kavan, a sophomore from Yankton, SD, was part of two school record-breaking performances at the Iowa State Open. She smashed the school mark in the 3000-meter run with a time of 9:45.35 (old record: 9:55.97) and was part of the school-record distance medley relay squad that finished second behind Michigan State with a 11:41.51 clocking. Kavan had a 1600-meter split of 4:49.

Liggins, a senior from Omaha, Neb., broke his own DakotaDome record in winning the 60-meter hurdles in a time of 7.98 at the John Dalton meet. The time is an automatic qualifying performance for the NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships.

Mokaya, a sophomore from Angong, Kenya, motored to a NCAA automatic-qualifying time of 4:07.26 in the mile run at the Iowa State Open. He finished seventh out of 45 competitors.

Brown, a freshman from Carson, Calif., won the long jump with a leap of 5.65 meters at the John Dalton meet. It is the second longest jump in NCC competition this year.

Kunkel, a senior from Eden Prairie, Minn., won both the shot put (45-0 1/2) and weight throw (49-0) at the SCSU Open. The shot put mark is a provisional-qualifying mark.

Beutz, a sophomore from Foley, Minn., won the Lake Superior Challenge with a personal-best height of 15-6 1/4 in the pole vault. The mark is also a provisional-qualifying performance.

Photo Courtesy of St. Olaf College

Garry Bjorklund Half Registration Online Lottery Opens Feb. 20

Registration for the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon begins Wednesday, February 20. You can register online (www.grandmasmarathon.com) starting at 12:01 a.m. and continuing through March 2. On March 3, 4,500 runners will be randomly selected from the registrants and will be informed of their acceptance via e-mail.

Entry fee for the race is $60, plus a processing charge. Only those 4,500 selected will have their credit cards charged. The race begins at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 21, 2008 on the second half of the Grandma's Marathon course. 1,200 spots remain for the 32nd annual Grandma's Marathon. Registration for the William A. Irvine 5K, held the day before Grandma's, will open March 19.

Scott Christiansen Leads US Men's Team For WC

Stillwater coach Scott Christensen will lead the US men's team at the IAAF World XC Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 30. He had to go through a bit of red tape to get clearance for the trip from the school district, but will be the men's head coach in Edinburgh. In that capacity he watched the USATF Championships in San Diego last weekend.

He provided the following observations on the performance of some of the Minnesotans: "I did watch my own Sean Graham(Stillwater High grad who now lives in Oregon) fade a bit over the last 4K, which was disappointing, and the Junior Men with Ryan Little in the top nine runners during the whole race, showing just how tough he is. He just could not crack the top six and a place on the team. Elliot Heath looked great early on and then, like Sean, faded. Katie McGregor has been on many teams. She knows how to race and showed it Saturday. She was in second for much of the race hoping for (Shalane) Flannagan to fall back. That never happened and Katie tucked in for a place on the team. "

On the men's team and the challenge facing them in Scotland, Scott adds: "Only Ryan Hall, the fifth place finisher, will not attend the Worlds. So having nine of the top 10 finishers at our National Championships (going to Worlds) is an attractive and strong team. The veterans like Dathan (Ritzenehin, USATF champ), and the Torres brothers are super excited. The course and weather in San Diego was nothing like Edinburgh is going to be. Mission Bay Park is flat and along the ocean. It was sunny and 65 degrees. The World course is ferocious with steep, steep uphills and downhills, many hairpin turns, plus it is the rainy season. The Scots pride themselves in serving up real European cross-country and have the course set to be just that."

A few personal observations to add. I lived in London for a year from September of 1992 to 1993. Three days a week I ran on Hamstead Heath, a wonderful north London park near Camden Town, which was also the site of the UK XC national championships that year. The race started with a 400 meter uphill climb and the rest of the loop course was equally brutal. If you weren't going up or down, you were coping with the shoe sucking mud.

This is no joke. After the race notices were placed in the British running publications about the many shoes recovered from the course. February and March are the rainy season in the UK and Scotland, which means that the ground is often saturated with moisture, making footing alternately slippery and akin to quicksand. Pictures of athletes after races in these conditions resemble photos of mud wrestlers. The Brits boast that it is cross country as it's meant to be. It is certainly different than the manicured golf courses that serve as the sites for US XC meets.

Those running in Edindurgh might get lucky and get a dry spell this year, but don't count on it. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Ritzenhein has run on the course and came away with an injury because of the difficulty of the up and downhill segments, so that will only add to the challenge the runners will face. They won't merely be running against the top runners in the world, they will also be fighting the course. One positive is that the Africans will be no more used to it than the US runners. Their courses tend to be flat, fast, and hard baked. Maybe the cold, mud, and rugged conditions will decrease their motivation, or, frightening thought, make them try and run faster to get out of those conditions and back into a warm shower or bathtub.

Emily Brown Makes Team, Makes Time for Worlds

Emily Brown surprised herself this weekend by finishing third in the USATF XC Championships in San Diego. Now she just has to juggle her responsibilities with internship she has at the U of M grad school nutrition program with her success on the race course.

Here are her thoughts: "The race obviously went better than I expected. I tried to take a pretty nonchalant approach to the race since I had never raced that distance before and really had no expectations of myself going in. I felt really relaxed throughout the greater portion of the race and just kept pushing the limits with each passing lap. The best memory I will take away from the race is the incredible Minnesota fan base that somehow materialized in San Diego.

"Every time we ran past the crowd, I could hear someone cheering for Emily, and I really thought there must have been another Emily. But then I saw some Minnesota hats and t-shirts and I was really proud that Katie (McGregor), Kristen (Nicolini Lehmkuhle), Mandi (Zemba), and I were able to represent the state well. Going into the race I said that I wouldn't go to Worlds even if I made it because I wouldn't be able to get the time off from my internship. But, in all honesty, I said that because I didn't think I would make it. I do plan on going and have offered to work Easter weekend at the hospital in order to do so. I think it will be a great time, and I am really honored to have the opportunity to represent the US on the World level."

Photo Courtesy of Team USA MN

Jason and Kristen Nicolini Lehmkuhle Named Heroes

Jason Lehmkuhle and Kristen Nicolini Lehmkuhle are this year's Human Race Heroes. Since 2002, the annual Human Race 8K has honored members of the Twin Cities running community with this award. The Lehmkules will be feted at a pre-race party on February 27 at O'Gara's Pub on the corner of Snelling and Selby Avenues in St. Paul. The party, which will also serve as a fundraiser for the Make It Happen Fund, begins at 7:30 p.m.

The Lehmkuhles selected the Jenny Crain Make It Happen Fund as the featured charity for this year's event to help raise funds for Jenny Crain, a Milwaukee-based elite runner who suffered serious injuries when hit by a car while training last August. The fund helps pay for her medical expenses.

Special wristbands will be available at the party for a $5 donation. Posters designed by Jenny's friend and Oregon Olympian Marla Runyan are also being given for a $15 donation. There is no fee to attend the party. The 36th annual St. Patrick's Day Human Race is scheduled for March 16. For a link to the race site, click here. For more information on the Jenny Craig Make It Happen Fund, click here.

Emily Schwitzer Books a Trip to Scotland

Duke freshman Emily Schwitzer, a Hopkins High grad, earned an unexpected trip to Scotland for the World Cross Country championships last weekend with a fifth place finish in the USATF junior national XC race.


Here are Schwitzer's thoughts on the race: "Honestly, I went into this race to have fun. I had never even heard about the USATF XC Championships until my coach told me about it earlier this year. We decided to sign up in order to give me some more experience racing in a competitive field. I really haven't competed in too many big meets so this was quite the experience.

"Luckily, the race went very well. I didn't really know where I would stand among the other runners, but because I kept in contact with some of the leaders through the majority of the race I was able to pull through in the end. I am still shocked that I was able to qualify to race in Scotland, and I am beyond excited to participate in such a unique opportunity. It's unbelievable
that I will get to be part of a team that represents our nation. I'm psyched. As of now, I won't be competing in the meet in Florida in a few weeks because I'll continue to race through the remainder of my indoor track season. Outdoor season hasn't really crossed my mind, and I really don't even know what events I will be focusing on. All I can hope for is to keep improving and being able to do what I love."

Photo courtesy of Duke University

Katie McGregor Makes Another US Team

Katie McGregor booked her spot on the US team for the IAAF World XC Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 30 this weekend in San Diego. She'll have a short time to enjoy that though, as she's off this weekend to compete in the USATF indoor championships in Boston. She's entered in the women's 3K . Computerless in San Diego, she offered these thoughts when she got back home: "I am excited to compete on another World Championship team and even more excited that Emily Brown will be my teammate. Dennis (Barker, Team USA MN coach) already bought his ticket for the trip, so we had some pressure to get the job done in San Diego!"

On this weekend's race, Katie says: "I am just running indoor track for fun. The 3K isn't my event, but I like to change things up every now and then. I enjoy competing, even if it is not my strongest event. I will not run world indoors if I make the team. "

Michelle Lilienthal's Foot and Travel Woes

Team USA Minnesota's Dennis Barker reports that Michelle Lilienthal's plan to run the AT&T Austin Half Marathon was short circuited by a flare up of plantar fascitis. So, that's why we couldn't find her in the results. The problems didn't end there for Michelle, however, Dennis says, as her flight back, routed through Chicago, was canceled due to weather. Never a dull moment on the international race circuit.

USA Cross Country Championships Photos

We're collecting all the photos we can find from Saturday's USA Cross Country Championships in San Diego. Links will be added as more become available.

A nice gallery of Minnesotans from Paul Giannobile on the USATF Minnesota site. Paul finished 50th in the Masters Men's 8k on Saturday.

Thom Weddle also contributed a nice set of photos to the USATF Minnesota site. Thom was the top runner in the 65-69 age group on Saturday.

A huge set of photos from trackandfieldphoto.com.

RunnerSpace.com doesn't have a ton of photos, but they do have some good shots of Gits, Brown and McGregor.

EliteRunning.com does a good job of getting at least one shot of almost every athlete in the race.

Photo by Paul Giannobile

Brief Talk With Alex Gits

Alex Gits is building an impressive running resume in a short period of time. Since she graduated last year from Edina High School, she has finished runner-up in the USATF junior nationals 5K on the track, helped Stanford win the NCAA XC title, and, on Saturday, finished second in the USATF XC Championships junior race, earning a spot on the team that will compete in the IAAF World XC Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 30. So, we asked Alexandra Ann Gits to tell us a little bit about herself via an e-mail Q & A.

DtB: Why Stanford?

AG: Why Stanford?- because the diversity here is incredibly humbling. I have a roomate whose parents are Korean immigrants and another roomate who contends nationally in quiz bowl. I love that we are not restricted to rooming with athletes and after attending a very homogeneous high school it is fantastic to belong to an instiution which grabs hold of differentation and where
everyone wants to succeed and do great things.

DtB: In the Stanford athletic bios your academic major is listed as undeclared. Do you have a particular academic interest?

AG: I'm meddling in premed, looking at becoming a physical therapist in sports medicine. Back home I have worked two summers at a clinic in Sports Medicine and absolutely loved it. I don't want to be a trainer. I want to work in an office where I can see a variety of ages and conditions.

DtB: In an interview after the race you were asked about running the 5 and 10K on the track. You said that you thought you got better as the distance got longer.

AG: Longer races and workouts have never daunted me. I have always reveled in good long
runs and I love the challenge and a hard long race where you are putting your full foot in. It is hard for me also to get the thrill of racing in shorter distances because it is over so quickly- I like
having time to make adjustments on the course and feel the swaying energies of opponents.

DtB: Any thoughts about trying the marathon?

AG: Marathons are a long way off- not until after college and maybe even not until I am much older.

DtB: You're on the team for a trip to Scotland. Have you traveled abroad before?

AG: I have already been to the UK and Scotland for a soccer tour during highschool. Our coach
was from England and he had the connections for us to play club teams and see some pro games. It was fantastic and as we traveled around in a double decker my soccer teamates and I couldn't help but grin at the rolling green hills- I can't wait to go back and experience the culture there again!

Photo Courtesy of Stanford University