Women’s team fatigues in Boston

On Sept. 24, the women’s cross country team brought home a 16th place finish at the 32nd Annual Codfish Bowl in Boston out of the 23 teams that competed.

Of the five team members running the 5k race, sophomore Allison Lones led the team for the fourth time this year with a time of 20:50. She finished 50th overall. Although it felt good to lead the team, she was not happy with her time.

“I was a little disappointed with my time,” Lones said. “I could have run low twenties, late nineteens if I had paced myself in the first mile.”

She explained that the coaches wanted them to be more consistent with their times in each mile and to pace themselves.

Coming in second for GC was freshman Rebecca Shane, who finished 84th out of 251 runners with a time of 22:04.

“Overall as a team we didn’t do as well as we could,” Shane said. “We’re just going to work harder in our workouts and try to overcome it. It wasn’t our best race.”

Senior Victoria Dobson finished third for the team and 85th overall with a time of 22:05. Sophomore Ashton Passino finished 93rd with a time of 22:16. Finally, senior Karissa Elkstrom finished at 23:05 taking 113th place.

“The times don’t reflect the ability of the runners,” Head Coach Joe Samprone said. Multiple components factored in to the team’s difficulty in the Codfish Bowl. This was the team’s fourth race in four weeks and its fatigue was reflected in its times.

“We were all disappointed,” Lones said. “I never want to make excuses but it was our fourth meet in a row. We were out of town, we had been traveling, and it’s hard to perform and do your best when there is that much traveling.”

Also, the weather played its part in the results. It was hot, humid and had rained a lot, making the course difficult.

“The course was really muddy which was a problem going up the hills, it was hard to get a grip,” Shane said.

This race had 251 runners, which is more than the team is used to competing against.

“When we run at home and run with other teams in our conference, we know the girls that are gonna go out fast and then not be able to finish strong, we know the girls that are going to be able to go out fast and stay out there and finish on top,” Lones said. “For this we were in a totally different place, we didn’t know the course, and when you’ve got 50 girls that just stampede out in front of you, it’s mentally challenging.”

The team lost its “pack mentality” in this race, which contributed to the 16th place finish.

“Normally our women run much closer in time than they did this week, they were more spread out,” Samprone said. “We still have some work to do.”

The team will enjoy a week off before competing in the Augusta State Invitational on Oct. 8 in Augusta.

Posted by Alyson Crosby on Sep 29 2011. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.