San Fran

Following our very nice performance at the Stanford Invitational I took several members of our team to the San Francisco Bay area for dinner and some site seeing.  Our travel schedule did not allow us to return to Salt Lake until Sunday morning.  If you "have" to get stuck somewhere while traveling for a meet this is one of those places that you can deal with :)  

We drove into downtown San Fran and then over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito.  Suasalito is a small tourist town on the northwest shore of SF Bay.  It attracts many different types of activities and people in the summer and fall months.  We ate at a nice Bistro right on the water and then did a little shopping in some of the local stores.  

When we departed Sausalito it was dark and some fog was rolling in so driving back over the Golden Gate was interesting.  From there we drove through Fisherman's Wharf which was full of people and night time activity as usual.  Then it was on to Coit Tower on the top of Telegraph Hill.  This is the highest point in the Bay area.  To see the city at night from that vantage point was pretty amazing.  Finally, we drove over to and then down the ever famous winding block on Lombard St.   A one block section of this street winds back and forth like a snake and is on a very steep incline.  Therefore, you have to drive very slowly and with great caution as the street is also very narrow.  

Check out the picks from this trip.  The night time picks are at the bottom of Lombard Street.  

 

Stanford Invitational

After spending the early part of the season mixing and matching our lineup we finally ran our top group together at Stanford.  This has traditionally been a large meet with 25-30 teams attending. This year was no different.  Last year we were 10th of 28 teams.  This year we ran our best team race of the season and placed 6th out of 33 teams.  

Our 1-2 punch of Chelsea DiGrazia and Alyssa Abbott finished 30th/31st and ran very well over the final 3K of the race.  However, it was our 3-4-5 runners who really picked things up and improved a great deal.  Lauren Endersen, Janett Ern, and Kellie Anderson all finished very well.  Those three combined to pass 32 runners in the last 400 meters!!!  Our elapsed time from #1-#5 was 43 seconds which is a big improvement over our earlier meets.  It was also the second best spread of any team at the meet.  

It was very warm and humid for that time of year in Palo Alto, but our kids held up well and this will give us a great deal of confidence as we go to Pre Nationals in three weeks.  We will spend that time continuing to train hard and work on tightening up our pack even more.  

Montana State Trip

Our annual trip to Bozeman was another good time.  I thought overall we improved as a team. Chelsea Digrazia ran a super race and challenged for the individual win.  Janett Ern ran the best cross race of her career.  Freshman Carly Selleck showed a lot of toughness passing several runners over the last mile and grabbing a top 25 finish.  As a team we didn't finish quite as high as I had hoped, but we did run without two of our top five runners.  We need to get out a little bit better in the first mile, but maintain a relaxed feel until it becomes time to make our move over the last half of the race.  

One of the best parts of this trip is the drive up through Yellowstone National Park.  The drive from West Yellowstone up to Bozeman has to rank as one of the top five most scenic drives in America.  Check out a few of the pictures from this trip to the right.  Amazing stuff!

Another short week ahead as we are off to Stanford this weekend.  This will be our first meet where we will be at full strength this year.  This will be our first 6k race of the season which always presents new challenges mentally and physically.  I think our training is geared more towards this distance, but ultimately it requires the women to be mentally stronger.  

This weeks video...Ashley Warnick was a senior my first year here at Utah and now lives with her husband, Kurt, in Bozeman.  She came out to cheer on her alma mater. 

Colorado State Classic

We knew this meet would be tough, but I thought our team really did a nice job.  We traveled to Ft Collins the day before and the trip (minus some rain going through Wyoming) went very smoothly.  Our team had a great pre meet workout and then enjoyed a very nice dinner at Johnny Carino's.  

Meet morning was a beautiful early fall day.  Sunny and mid 50's.  This was our teams first race on this particular course.  I elected not to run two of our top runners.  They are both training well and we want to keep them healthy.  After going out a little too quickly at our first meet, our team plan was to open a little more conservatively and then really work the middle mile of the 5K race. Unfortunately, we gave up too much ground in the first mile to CSU and then ran out of course trying to catch up.  

I was pleased with two of our freshmen (Carly Selleck and Rachel Perkins) who both ran well. Carly was running her first race for us.  Rachel was a soccer player in high school so this was only her second xc race of her life.  They still have a lot to learn, but they ran hard and gave a great effort.  

The rest of our team definitely ran better than they did in the opening meet, but we still have some training to do.  They know what it takes and I know they will keep improving throughout the season.  

We are off to the Montana State Invitational this coming Saturday.  We have traditionally ran very well at this meet in the past.  Our team really enjoys this trip.  The drive through Yellowstone National Park is beautiful.  The weather for the meet can be a bit unpredictable, but the course is usually very fast.  We are looking forward to a great week of training in the mean time.  

 

More Video

Here are a few more videos including some of the fireworks display after the victory and celebrating 10 years of our stadium.

A Crazy Weekend of Fun

What a weekend!  The cross country team had a great workout on Friday afternoon and then we went to Park City to get our long run in on Saturday morning before the real fun began.  Some of the track and xc women gathered at the University of Utah tent at the Avenues Street Fair for some "fun in the sun".  (The Avenues is a historical residential area near the university and the annual fair is always very festive with something available for everyone).  They gave out free 'U' tatoos and team posters to all of our great Utah supporters.  

Then the #22 ranked Utah football team opened their home schedule against Mountain West Conference rival UNLV.  It was tied 14-14 at half, but the Utes rolled in the second half and won convincingly 42-21.  

Check out the video below of the days activities and fun.  Thanks to senior hurdler, Chelsea Shapard for all of the great footage.  You had to actually see or sit in the MUSS (Mighty Utah Student Section) to understand how wild 4,700 college students can be.  She has some great footage from the middle of one of ESPN's "Best Student Sections in America".  

Practice

Just returned from our long run up in Park City.  We had a tempo type workout on Friday, so we kept the long run pretty relaxed.  We had a group go for 75 minutes and a few others go less due to returning from illness or injury.  They will continue to build as they get stronger.

I now have a Flip Video system so I will be attempting to add some short clips and provide and even better experience for everyone who reads this and wants to get to know or program.  

I am by no means an expert, but hopefully I'll be able to figure it out.  

Utes Open XC Season

Ahhh...the season is officially underway.  We had our first meet at Utah State on Saturday.  It was a triangular with USU and Weber State.  Utah senior, Chelsea DiGrazia, picked up where she left off the track season with another outstanding performance.  She was the individual winner and in complete control of the race from the gun.  Chels ran just fast enough to win, but looked and felt relaxed the whole way and used a nice sprint over the final 100m to hold off all challengers.  It was her first cross country individual win at any level.  (She was a soccer player in high school and never ran xc).

As a team I thought we ran well early, however we have to be better in the middle of the race.  The rest of our gals finished well, but ran out of course playing catch up.  This situation will solve itself with a few more weeks of training and another race.  A few of our gals are notorious for needing a couple races (regardless of how well they are training) before they are hitting on all cylinders.  Beyond that...it's August!  We'll have it all put together in late October and November when the races matter.  

We now have two weeks before our next meet at Colorado State.  It will be another smaller meet in terms of teams and total runners.  However, the quality will be very good.   We have some great workouts planned this week and next, so we will look to race even better then.