Mergaert Leads Utes with 1st Team All MWC Performance

Sophomore Amanda Mergaert improved on her 28th place performance at the conference championship meet a year ago by running herself onto the Mountain West Conference First Team All Conference team with her seventh place finish at this years meet. She was followed by true freshman, Alexis Laws, who was 28th. Jenny McCune (31st), Rebekah Winterton (35th), and Megan Combe (46th) rounded out our scoring five. As a team we were fifth, but only seven points from fourth. The meet was hosted by Wyoming at 7220 ft above sea level. The runners were also greeted by 30-40 mph sustained winds.

I thought our first two runners ran particularly well. Everyone gave great physical effort, but I think we still have some work to do mentally. That comes with experience and doing a better job of working together during the race.

The pics are of Amanda receiving her All Confererence award.

Student Athlete Halloween Party

The Annual Student Athlete Halloween Party took place this past Sunday night at the student union. Bowling, pumpkin painting, a canned food drive, and good food were the order of the evening. Each team had a theme for their costumes. Our team decided to be "geeks" and the results were pretty funny.

This is just another fun event to help our student athletes have some fun together and forget about the stresses of their studies for a few hours. It also helps out our local food pantry as a requirement to get into the event is providing canned goods. This event sponsored by our Student Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) which keeps our teams involved in community service projects and discusses issues that are important to the student athlete experience and overall success.

October 23, 2010...A New Era

A "monumental" day in he history of the University of Utah Track & Field program took place today. The Athletics department held an Opening Celebration Ceremony for the brand new McCarthey Family Outdoor Track & Field that was recently completed on campus. Other than dealing with some rain (for the first time in weeks) the day was a huge success. Thanks to everyone who allowed this day to finally happen. A special thanks to the McCarthey Family for their generous support of this facility and the University of Utah Athletics over the years. Their generosity will be felt for generations to come with this new facility.

Thanks to everyone (especially the alums and former coaches) who attended the event. It had been 28 years since the University of Utah last had a track facility on campus. To our current athletes I say "Welcome Home" and thanks for your patience of this arduous process. There is no doubt that it will be worth it!

It's now time to continue moving this program forward and setting even higher goals than we already had. We have the support and now we have a world class facility to allow us to dream big and achieve great things. It's a great day to be a Ute.

Go Utes!

Pre Nats

We had hoped to perform a little better in the team standings, however the experience our young group gained will be valuable in the future. We needed a "do over" for the first 400 meters. We didn't respond well to being in the very last starting box and with 40 teams on the starting line we didn't gauge the field very well and ended up near the back at the first turn. However, I give our group a ton of credit for not panicking and running tough over the last two miles. Amanda led us again with an outstanding effort finishing 32nd overall with a new 6K PR of 21:05. To get that far up in the field considering where she was at the mile was excellent. Between her, Jenny, and Rebekah they made up about 30 points in the final 1K of the race.

Our final conference championship as a member of the Mountain West Conference is next Friday at Wyoming. That will be a completely different race with only about 1/4 of the total number of runners as Pre Nats. However, it will require our best effort to finish where we believe we should.

The pictures are from the starting line at Pre Nats, the canal walk in downtown Indianapolis, and the monument in downtown Indy which recognizes the War with Mexico, the Indian and British War, and the capture of Vincennes. We had some time to explore Indy before our flight back to SLC on Saturday after the race.

Workout Wednesday

Today we headed up to Park City to do some 1K threshold intervals. It's Fall Break here so we took advantage and used the morning hours for our final workout before heading out to Terre Haute, IN tomorrow for this weekends Pre National meet. It was a perfect morning as you will see in the videos below. For those of you who want a good laugh...after hearing me cheer on the girls and yell instructions a couple walking their dog asked me if I was from the south or maybe east coast?

Practice...we're talkin' about practice

Monday workout before Pre Nationals. 3-4 minute intervals with 75% recovery to run time. It's Fall Break for us so we did these at 10am at Sunnyside Park which is about a mile from campus. It was a little overcast and 62 degrees...perfect!

V = Tahoe??

Usually, V stands for victory...and I'm happy to say that this weekend it did stand for a dominate victory. We traveled to the University of Nevada to compete in a 5k Chase Race against UNR and Sacramento State. This race format is very unique with coaches setting their line ups based on four starting groups. Group 1 starts and then Groups 2-4 have :30 handicap starting times after the group in front of them begins. I set our line up based on our previous race results. We had two runners in the first group, three in the second, two in the third, and our number one runner in the final group. You never really know how it's going to actually turn out, but this time it was about perfect. We swept the first four spots and easily won the meet 19-47-58 over UNR and Sac St. As usual the course at UNR was not conducive to fast times, however it forced us to compete in an intelligent manner. it also had a couple of areas that required a hop over a small creek that runs through the park. I think the different style of race and the type of course allowed us to just focus on running our race and competing against other people rather than worry about times. We did that well as the girls really came focused and put forth a great effort.

The reward for their efforts was a trip up to Lake Tahoe for lunch following the meet. Our flight back to SLC wasn't until later in the day, so we took advantage of the great weather. We enjoyed lunch at a lakeside grill/cafe and then Jenny made friends with a local paddle boarder who let some of the girls try it out. Check it out in the video and picture.