The Macalester cross country teams got an opportunity to preview the regional racecourse on Saturday at the Dan Huston Invitational in Waverly, Iowa. While there were some good individual performances, both teams came away disappointed with the overall results.

With two of their top runners not racing due to injury and illness, the Mac women tied for fourth out of seven teams, trailing meet champions St. Olaf, Wartburg, and Gustavus. Both those runners should be back for the team’s next meet and the MIAC Championships on Oct. 30th.

“Our performance was hit by a few things: coming off a few great weeks of racing, missing Koby [Hagen ’06] and Francie [Streich ’06], split packs, and training cycles,” women’s coach Jordan Cushing said. “Ninety-eight percent of our training and racing days are going great—we just hit that two percent.”

In its five-team race, the Macalester men finished behind Carleton, an important conference rival, and Wartburg College, but ahead of both Grinnell and Gustavus.

“We discovered that we are on the fringe of the top four teams in the region, and that our top four runners can go head-to-head with the best teams,” men’s coach Matt Haugen said.

Both the men and women achieved the second-lowest spreads in the field on Saturday. The spread, which is calculated by the range in seconds between the first and fifth runner of each team, is an important indication of teammates working together during the race. Generally, the lower the spread, the better a team should have done. Both teams have been looking for a consistent fifth runner to emerge who could reduce the spread and boost the teams in meets, but so far the spot has been filled by a variety of people.

The meet was organized unusually because it split the racing field into two distances. Both the men and the women had the option of a four-kilometer race in addition to the more traditional distances of eight and six kilometers, respectively.

Cushing scheduled mostly six-kilometer races (instead of the standard five kilometers) for her team this season to condition them for the region meet, and Emily Stafford ’06 noticed the difference.

“We raced 4K in high school, so I thought it would be easier, but I’d much prefer the 6K,” Stafford said. “We haven’t really started our speed training yet, but I’m so used to the 6K and being able to have the extra two kilometers to pick it up.”

Anna Gordon ’06 was the top Mac finisher in the 4K, grabbing 12th place in 15:37. Stafford, Callie PaStarr ’07, Nathalia Brashear ’06, and Jo Nice ’05 all finished in the top 35.

In the 6K, Anna Shamey ’06 and Allie Woerpel ’06 paced the team, finishing 24th and 28th. Elizabeth Nelson ’08, Talia Kahn-Kravis ’07, and Sammi Frey ’05 rounded out the top five.

For the Macalester men, the meet gave seasoned veterans the chance to practice the 8K regional course and freshmen the opportunity to score points in a varsity meet.

“The men’s team has a really strong group of top four runners [Bo Rydze ’05, Dylan Keith ’07, Eric Olson ’05, and Roscoe Sopiwnik ’06], and then there are about five more who are all trying to crack into that pack and be the fifth man, the last runner whose points count in the team scoring,” Nate Crider ’08 said. Crider led the Mac Pack in the four-kilometer race, finishing 21st with a time of 13:05.

In the eight-kilometer race, Rydze led the Mac Pack, finishing seventh out of 121 racers in 26:25. Keith, Olson, and Sopiwnik all scored in the top 25, and Tim Stendahl ’05 who finished 30th place.

Haugen had the underclassmen compete in the four-kilometer race. Tom Hammer ’07 trailed Crider by 14 seconds with a time of 13:19, and Matt Wegmann ’08 and Said Guled ’07 were less than three seconds behind Hammer.

Haugen and Cushing cite pack-running, which occurs when runners of similar abilities train and race together as a unit instead of constantly competing with each other, as an important focus for the three weeks going into the conference meet.

“We are looking forward to packing it up this upcoming weekend [at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Invitational] and then again at conference,” Cushing said. “The conference and region teams are tough and so we need to be the same.”