NCAA DI Championships: Notes From Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – What a day it was at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships.

History was made: Edward Cheserek became the only man in history to win three consecutive XC titles.

New Mexico dominated: The top-ranked Lobos had their entire scoring lineup in the top-25 and scored 49 points, the third lowest winning score ever.

The rain held off; the wind didn’t. Both races went off without a hitch, though.

Here are a few notes from Saturday’s exciting day of racing.

Tiernan left it all on the course

Villanova junior Patrick Tiernan went for the win from the start.

He had thought about it for too long to not try to break Cheserek.

“Over the summer I was thinking, ‘This year I’m just going to go for it,'” said Tiernan, who finished second. “I regretted last year. I just sat in and I wasn’t as prepared as far as training goes. It didn’t turn out so well for me. So this summer I was just trying to get my mileage in to make sure I could give it all I got.”

Tiernan took off at the gun and Cheserek followed – as did the rest of the elite men.

Through 2k, there were 10 men within two seconds of the lead. At 5k, there were none.

Tiernan and Cheserek left the field behind them. Then Cheserek dropped Tiernan.

“He broke me,” Tiernan said. “He broke me pretty hard.”

Cheserek and Tiernan were tied at 8k (22:51.5). The Oregon junior won by 26 seconds.

Tiernan held his head high after the race, knowing he was the first runner-up Wildcat since 1970.

“If you can get across that line, just absolutely spent and knowing you’ve given it all you got, and you raced exactly how you wanted to race and you know that was the best possible race you could do, anybody should be proud whether you finished first or last,” Tiernan said. “I’m very proud of today’s race.”

Blistering pace sets tempo in women’s race

Usually Arkansas’ Dominique Scott, Notre Dame’s Molly Seidel and Providence’s Sarah Collins are the ones out early to see if the rest of the field could hang with them.

That was the case Saturday afternoon at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer Park, but it wasn’t by choice.

“We all didn’t really want to be going much faster… but there were 300 runners behind you, just like pushing you,” said Scott, who finished third behind Seidel and Boise State’s Allie Ostrander. “We just didn’t want to get tripped.”

There were 15 runners within seven-tenths of a second of each other at the 2k split.

“You definitely notice it,” Seidel said. “You definitely feel it on your back. It’s kind of like surfing a tidal wave a little bit. It’s a little bit terrifying, but at the same time, you get that energy.”

Seidel eventually pushed harder and it turned into the three-woman race many expected it to be with Ostrander and Scott right there.

With 2k to go, Seidel put in the final surge that made her the first women’s champion in program history.

“Going into it, we talked about being ready for the last 2k and really start squeezing it down,” Seidel said. “By the time I got up there, there’s not very much race left, so I really had to start trying to make that move.”