Cross Country Round-up: Generals Invitational

September 8 - The Quaker cross country teams traveled to Lexington, Virginia for the Generals Cross Country Invitational at Washington and Lee University.  This is the fourth consecutive year Guilford has run in this meet and it proved the women's most successful outing and the second-best showing for the men.  What makes this showing more impressive is how we "trained through" this meet. This means we did not lighten our training load to run well.  We also left Greensboro at 5:00 a.m., which is just a little earlier than most of our students are used to on Saturday mornings.

The Washington and Lee's Dick Miller Course is a great cross country course.  It starts out on a practice field, winds through the rolling woods around campus and ends on the same field.  The course is known for one fairly long and steep hill that the women encounter about 2/3 of the way through their race and the men see twice, right before miles two and four.  It was definitely a tougher course than the one we ran the previous weekend at Virginia Wesleyan.

In order to help the women better prepare for the ODAC Championship meet in October, Washington and Lee ran a six-kilometer women's race so the students could experience the course prior to the conference meet.  The women's race began at 10:00 a.m. and our team went out much more conservatively than the previous week due to the additional 1000 meters and the aforementioned hill. Charissa Duncan led the team through the first mile at 7:03 and was followed closely by Grace Normann.  Carolyn Herlehy passed the mile mark 40 seconds later, followed by Paige McCall and Caroline Gadsby another 20 seconds later. Emily Frenzel, Johanna Naradzay and Rachel Dede were next, which brought the entire team past the one-mile mark within 1:50 of each other.  By the three-mile mark, the distance between the top-five women widened considerably with the order the same.  At the three-mile mark, the interval between the first and fifth runners opened to 4:21, which is something upon which we need to improve. Overall, the women placed seventh out of 13 teams. Charissa ran the second-fastest time in school history for a 6k and Grace had the school's sixth-fastest time.

Results:
Charissa Duncan - 27:37
Grace Normann - 28:16
Carolyn Herlehy - 30:35
Caroline Gadsby - 31:37
Paige McCall - 31:58
Emily Frenzel - 33:47
Johanna Naradzay - 34:15
Rachel Dede - 37:49

The men's race started differently than last week, when the men all passed the first mile within five seconds of each other. Jeremy Wang (a.k.a Jeremy Jr.) came through the first mile in 5:41, followed by Jeremy Bante (a.k.a Jeremy Sr.) and Chris Walker at 5:57, and then Marc Ramsay and Leon Odell at 6:04 and 6:08, respectively.Tyler Brown, Brett McDonough, Ethan Wiley, Nico de la Vega Billingsely, and Chad Currin rounded out the Quakers' runners.At the three-mile mark, Jeremy Jr. held his lead, but Leon moved into second position.Jeremy Sr. and Chris passed next, followed by Marc.The time spread for the first five at three miles was one minute.Brett, Tyler and Ethan passed within the next two minutes, with Nico one minute later, and Chad a minute after that. At the finish, the time spread between the top five was 1:47, which was closer than the previous week, but still in need of improvement.Overall, the men's team also placed seventh out of 13 teams.

Results:
Jeremy Wang - 32:27
Leon Odell - 32:43
Chris Walker - 32:59
Marc Ramsay - 34:08
Jeremy Bante - 34:15
Brett McDonough - 34:53
Ethan Wiley - 36:54
Tyler Brown - 37:34
Nico de la Vega Billingsely - 38:48
Chad Currin - 41:04