In the girls' race, Courtney Filliben of Lourdes led the field to a swift 75-second opening 400m. By 800m Filliben had faded, relinquishing the lead to Maclay's Jana Stolting, closely followed by Shelby Hayes, the 2009 state cross-country champion from Winter Park. Over the next two laps Stolting and Hayes ran away from the rest of the athletes. But early in the second half of the race Hayes could no longer keep pace with Stolting and fell back. By the end of the fifth lap Hayes had lost contact, and Stolting just continued to add to her lead for the rest of the race, ultimately winning by almost 60 meters with a time of 10:41.54.
High School Girls' 3200m ResultsPlc Name Year School Time |
All four of the 2009 FHSAA cross-country champions started the high school boys' 3200--Melbourne's Brian Atkinson (4A), Leon's Matt Mizereck (3A), Bishop Kenny's Colin Barker (2A), and Maclay's Patrick Swain (1A). Even more impressive, these four athletes represent nine state cross-country titles, because Atkinson and Mizereck had won the championship three times and Swain twice. If excellence at the five-kilometer cross-country race transferred to the 3200-meter track event, this was going to be some race.
Mizereck had indicated before the race that he was going to be chasing a sub-9:00 3200. He led the pack through the first lap at 69 seconds, a bit slower than the 67.5 seconds per lap required for a 9:00 final time. Mizereck ran the next couple of laps at about 68 seconds. The field was content to follow him. The pace had lagged by the halfway point, and Creekside's Jimmy Clark took over the lead for a pair of laps. Mizereck stayed right behind him, and moved back into the lead for the penultimate lap. Most importantly, though, ten of the runners in the field were still in striking distance. It was going to be a wild last lap.
Bell lap. Everyone accelerated. Barker struck. Going into the final turn Barker had the narrowest of leads with Mizereck breathing on his collar. Barker and Mizereck began to gap the field. The home straight. Mizereck couldn't catch Barker. Barker couldn't lose Mizereck. Half the straight was gone. More. In the final meters Mizereck powered by Barker and crossed the line first in front of his home crowd, 9:02.87 to 9:03.03. For anyone wondering whatever happened to Florida's fast 3200 runners, the answer is that they were in Tallahassee on 26 March 2010. Six athletes broke 9:10. 9:20 wouldn't have even put you in the top ten.
High School Boys' 3200m ResultsPlc Name Year School Time |
Links:
- Photos of the 2010 FSU Relays 3200m run
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2823865&l=ceb149f5be&id=5215641 - Video at RunnerSpace.com
http://www.runnerspace.com/video.php?do=view&video_id=22813
what an exciting race. like being able to watch the video
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of streaming video. Lurching and grainy are not what I'm looking for in movies. But this was a good enough race that I did watch the video. It wasn't one of those "sit and kick" affairs; it was a case of "run real fast and kick even faster."
ReplyDeleteHerb.