Sheila SobchikThe men’s and women’s cross country team’s will represent Cal Poly at two separate invitationals Saturday for the team’s first competition since the UC Irvine Invitational on Saturday on Sept. 8.
A group of runners from the men’s team will travel to Eugene, Ore. today to prepare for the Bill Dellinger Invitational hosted by No. 5 Oregon on Sept. 29
“It will give us an opportunity to race an incredibly talented deep field of teams from across the nation,” men’s and women’s cross country coach Mark Conover said. “It will be a good race to get our feet wet, so to speak, and get out there and have to race and respond to a top-notch field as we start to progress toward the more important part of the season.”
Other top-10 teams attending the meet will be No. 1 Wisconsin and No. 7 Texas-El Paso.
The women’s team and a separate squad from the men’s team will travel to the Stanford Invitational the same day in Palo Alto to compete, something Conover said is going to also be a great competition.
“Stanford is always a top-ranked men’s and women’s program,” Conover said. “A lot of the top California schools will be there and some out-of-state schools as well.”
Sophomore Evan Anderson has posted the top time for Cal Poly so far this season, finishing the men’s 8-kilometer at the UC Irvine Invitational Sept. 8 with a time of 24:34, an improvement from the 24:59 time he posted at the UC Santa Barbara Open the week before.
Cal Poly’s top runner on the men’s team, Phillip Reid, sat out for the meet in Irvine along with Troy Swier, which gave teammates and roommates Evan Anderson and Leif Anderson a chance to set some top marks for the team.
“We felt like it would be best for some of the guys to race and for some to just kind of stay here and get ready for other things down the road,” Conover said. “For the guys that went, that race really simulated a good, hard workout and definitely accomplished that goal.”
Reid said that he has been racing against some of the runners that will be racing at the Bill Dellinger Invitational since the high school level.
Along with top-finishers pulling in low points for the team, the Cal Poly men are also pushing some depth.
Sophomores Joe Gatel and Carl Dargitz, along with freshman Jeff Lease, are a key part of that depth. Gatel, Dargitz and Lease finished in places 11-13 respectively, at the Irvine meet.
“It’s a really veteran group of men who seem very focused on wanting to accomplish goals which are lofty in light of what we’ve done in recent years, you know, winning conference titles and returning to the NCAA championships and trying to be one of the top teams in that race,” Conover said.
Reid, who is roommates with both Anderson’s said that he is impressed with how the two are coming along this season.
“Their training is going phenomenal,” Reid said. “Both those guys are on their game right now.”
As for the men’s team in as a whole, Reid said that it is “one of Cal Poly’s best cross country teams.”
For the women’s team, sophomores Kimberly Donatelli and Birdie McCarey have been the top finishers.
Donatelli said that the women’s team will be competing in the 6-kilometer race at the Stanford Invitational.
“What we hope to gain from that is just learning how to run (the 6-kilometer) because a lot of the younger girls are used to shorter races like (5-kilometers),” Donatelli said.
McCarey was the top finisher for the Mustangs with an eighth place time of 18:26 and Donatelli finished in 11th at the meet in 18:28.
Conover said that the women’s team tends to post closer times in competition.
“The ladies (are) a young group and I’m really happy to see that they’re really embracing this group mentality, you know, trying to stay in a tight pack even in races,” Conover said. “There’s a lot of new freshmen that came in that were very talented high school runners and these young ladies have come in and have adapted to the academics and the training.”
Donatelli said that the freshmen usually come in and “get a feel for what the team is about” but aren’t usually expected to “step up” the way she said the freshman have this year.
“They really had to step up and they really had to be the team,” Donatelli said. “This is a building year. In a few years there’s not doubt that we’ll be winning conference.”
Among the top freshmen are Leanne Fogg and Kristen Sanzari.
Sanzari posted her best time of the season at the UC Santa Barbara Open, finishing in ninth with a time of 18:48, and Fogg’s top finish came at Irvine with a 21st-place finish in 18:54.
“In high school our training was similar, but racing-wise there are a lot more girls that are out there that you realize are a lot faster than you,” Sanzari said. “You’re not winning every race like you would be in a little high school meet.”
Conover said that consistency is a must in the training schedule, noting that offseason training is a must to be able to be competitive at the start of the season.
“These are people that came in here with a lot of running in the summer months,” Conover said. “If you don’t get work done in the summer then it’s not going to get done when you compete in the fall.”
Sundays are the greatest distance days according to Conover, citing that the team will run for an hour-and-a-half to two hours.
On Tuesdays, the team focuses more on pace work and follows up on Thursdays with a “medium day.”
Conover said that on average the men’s team is runs between 70-90 miles and the women’s team 40-60 miles per week, “give or take.” He added that the team stays relatively consistent in the training regiment but might back off of the distance in the week prior to a major competition.
“We get in a rhythm as runners and if you tweak it too much, physiologically, you create a funk and sometimes that can affect your mental outlook,” Conover said.