Winter Update
Although the last post was nearly four months ago, not a lot has happened on the LRC Racing front since the Governor’s Cup in mid-October. Drew Pope did travel to Washington D.C. to run the Marine Corps Marathon on October 30th. Drew ran an outstanding PR of 2:49:36, cutting more than 15 minutes off his previous marathon. Drew ran a solid race, ignoring the urge to go out too fast and pacing himself evenly throughout the race. Many LRC runners ran in the Lincoln Track Club’s (LTC) Holiday Run on December 5th. The racing conditions were tough with several inches of snow on the Pioneer’s Park course, however, Quinn Lewandowski and Logan Watley placed 4th and 5th, respectively. Times are not available, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be posted here, seeing as Brian Wandzilak, TNB, won the 5k in just over 20 minutes. Amber Brandenburger and Nora Youngs went 1-2 in the women’s 5k. Finally, with the USATF Club Track & Field Meet this summer, Logan Watley ran the 3k at the Prairie Wolf Invite on January 20th in order to attempt to qualify for the track meet’s 5k race. The qualifying time was 9:04, and Logan ran steady 72 second quarters to finish in a time of 9:00. Assuming the time isn’t disqualified due to being run on a banked track, Logan qualified for the 5k in this summer’s club national meet.
In preparation for the Club Track National meet on July 6th and 7th, LRC Racing expanded their club membership criteria to include non-distance track and field athletes. Although forms are still being collected from prospective athletes, both Derek Frese and Elliott Bulling have been accepted for membership to the LRC Racing T&F team. Derek is the head throwers coach at Nebraska Wesleyan, and Elliott is a graduate assistant for the throwers at NWU. There bios will be added to the “Members” page if you would like to find out more about them. Both of them threw the shot at the NWU Open on February 4th, and Elliott qualified for the USATF Championships with a throw of over 50m. Derek and Elliott should provide some depth (and points) to our team this summer.
With this week being pretty much the last week in February, the seven month racing season is about to begin. Although those seven months are usually separated into spring, summer and fall seasons, the number of road races ran by our team members is sure to pick up in the coming months. The first spring road race for a number of our runners is the Leprechuan Chase, which is put together by Ben Cohoon, our very own LRC member. This unusual 10k race (where the women are given a 5 min head start) will take place on Saturday, March 10th, at Mahoney State Park (www.lc10k.com). Lincoln Track Club (LTC) will host their first race of the year on Saturday, March 31st, with the State Farm 5k/10m run on the Mopac trail. As most everyone on the team is gearing their training towards the Lincoln Half/Full Marathon on May 6th, nearly all members of the team will use this race as either a workout or a gauge on their current fitness level.