Champaign, IL— Just an hour ago, Head Coach Eric De Guevara sent out the performance list for Club Relays. Find it here.
This is not the official heat sheet for Saturday. A couple things about the list:
1. Lots of people to run with
27 Teams, roughly 1000 entries in 30 events (men and women). Competition brings out the best times. There are 143 men seeded in the mile. This likely means that there are 9 heats judging from last year”s amounts. With that comes a small variance of seed times. 13 people are seeded at 4:50. Any runner could theoretically run with any other one in that heat. If an opponent makes a smart move, you can too. Trust your training, your coaches, and yourself. If you must up the courage, you could be in for a large PR this Saturday, regardless if you are our top runner or our 50th runner.
2. Seed times are questionable.
The most obvious example of this is Cincinnati using their average individual time for their relay time. I hope this gets changed so they are in the correct heat and not in the fastest for all their events, and that they have 4 people running the relay. However, there are times/distances that I know are underestimated. I don”t know if this is a coaching move, so I”ll just mention the most obvious. Graduate Student Yemi Sonoiki just jumped over 5m last meet (check the last post to see the actual distance), but is seeded at 1.73m. I”m pretty sure he is taller than that distance.
3. Indiana is coming for us.
Anybody who runs cross country knows what these guys are capable on the distance end, but they have added sprinters and jumpers to their repertoire and are frequently the top seed in the race. Don”t panic just yet, because just as everyone should know, we have the deepest team in NIRCA (Michigan is a close 2nd in this regard). I just want to bring this to your attention so that if you ever lose motivation in a race and see a crimson and cream jersey ahead of you, you work towards passing them.
4. I don”t know how to predict scores.
These relays are very weirdly scored. Some events require 4 runners while most field events require 2 competitors. This means a larger amount of people than you think score in the event. Who is going to be our fourth girl in the mile, or who is going to step up in the SMR?
