Last weekend, the Illinois Track Club traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to participate in the two day Washington University Invitational outdoor track meet.
Friday night featured both men’s and women’s distance races under the lights. Greg Netols led a strong 5000m squad, finishing in 15:13.95, while Brendan McDonnell set the first club record of the weekend, taking 6th place (31:19.01) in the 10000m. Turning to the women’s 5000m, Michelle Turner ran 19:28.61, a 34 second personel record, while in the 10000m, Kerry Devitt ran 38:48.75 as the sole ITC entrant in the event.
Despite inclement weather on Saturday, a number of club records were set. In the steeplechase, Monica O’Connor, Lauren Choi and Heather Guetterman all surpassed the previous club record in the event, with Monica leading the way in a time of 12:42.34. The 4x100m team annihilated the previous club record by over a second, finishing in 9th with a time of 51.32. Katharina Rains just missed her own club record, jumping 1.53m in the high jump, while the 4x400m team was only 0.02 seconds off the club record, running 4:11.04 to take 5th place.
On the men’s side, Chris DeSilva finished 6th in the steeplechase in a new club record of 9:49.29, while the men’s 4x100m team ran a club record of 43.01 to finish 9th. Jack Skelton ran 0:48.90 to finish in 3rd place in the 400m, while Andrew Cholewa ran 0:58.38 to finish in 7th place in the 400m hurdles, both less then a half-a-second off club records. Ryan Jorgensen ran the top time for the team in the 1500m taking 3rd place (4:02.89).
In summary, it was a great weekend for races, with many more strong performances by the Illinois Track Club!
