<ross country team improved last year’s conference finish by one spot, taking 6th place in Saturday’s MIAC Championships at Como Park in St. Paul.
Charlie Gamble ’10 battled sickness during the week and managed a 22nd-place finish in 27:01. John Davis ’11 ran his best race of the season to finish 24th in 27:03. Both received All-MIAC honorable mention citations for their performances.
The times were not indicative of the quality of the race Saturday, as wet conditions and a fierce wind slowed the field.
The early pace was brisk despite the weather, in part because the narrow new start encouraged teams to get off the line hard to avoid getting tangled up in the thick part of the pack.
Gamble and Davis were through two kilometers in 6:24 and 6:32, respectively, and moved up in the field after that point despite the pace slowing.
Bobby Davis ’13 ran 27:29 for 35th, trailing only three other first-year runners at the finish. Josh Campbell ’13 was close behind, running 27:34 for 42nd overall.
Campbell’s knee swelled up the size of a tangerine, or even a small grapefruit. He later said it felt like someone was driving a nail into his leg with every stride, though this turned out to be just a bad dream.
Colin Sinclair ’11 used his devastating finishing kick to finish 50th in 27:50, rounding out the scoring five for the Knights.
The Fellahs defeated Bethel 167-177 and were 66 points behind 5th-place St. John’s. Hamline won the meet with 61 points, followed by St. Olaf with 66.
Head coach Dave Ricks, a native of New Jersey, was happy with his team’s performance, noting that his Knights beat everyone they could. He then said some other things.
The top seven runners will take this weekend off in preparation for the NCAA Central Region Championships in Grinnell, Iowa next Saturday. The rest of the team competed yesterday in the Great Karhu Shoe Race.
The Fellahs managed a courageous second-place finish at Karhu, falling only to host St. Olaf, 22-42.
Blake Hansen ’10 won the individual race in a time of 27:40. The effort was actually much better than 27:40 because the course was at least 100 meters long.
“8,000 is a really big number, and none of us can count that high, so we just pretty much guessed where to put the finish,” said an anonymous St. Olaf race organizer.
Hansen trailed Ole freshman Josh Wold and something called Lillehaugen for much of the race, passing Wold with only 100 meters remaining and proceeding to crush him on the uphill finish.
Adam Scherling ’13 ran a spectacular race to finish fifth overall, wearing only a loin cloth and body paint. Scherling’s time was probably somewhere around 28:15.
Michael Sanders ’10 also ran well. Sanders, a sprinter, wore a speedsuit and shaved his beard, leaving only sideburns that resemble X-Men character Wolverine.
Aaron Hirsh ’13 crossed next for Carleton, running his best race of the season and also donning a loin cloth.
The meet was scored manually after a power outage at St. Olaf killed the automatic timing system just hours before the race began.