The men from Madison open their outdoor campaign this evening with a 1500m at the Sun Angel meet in Tempe, Arizona. We’ll have a first-hand report from Matt and Chris after the race. Results will be available here. For now, a few pre-race thoughts from Chris.
Why this race as your outdoor opener?
We chose the Sun Angel meet for our outdoor opener for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a good sized meet with good competition, where we wouldn’t have to worry about exceedingly large fields as many meets this time of year have. Secondly, it is nice because the track has got the same surface as the track as does in Beijing. Additionally, it is sunny and mid 80′s, which is a nice change from the 30′s and rain/snow we have now, plus we have some friends out here, so it’s nice to come see them.
What’s next after this?
After this meet we are all heading to the Stanford Cardinal Invite for a quality 1500, then back home for a fast mile to give the home crowd a treat! (So if you’re around the Madison area on May 10, you should stop by the Dan McClimon track to catch a good mile race!!) After which we all separate and go to different meets taking different build ups toward the Trials, depending on what we need.
You do things in training like a 2:56 1200m time trial. Why not stay put if you can run so close to a race effort on your own?
It’s true we could stay home to get in a hard effort that is comparable, but when we stay home it is hard to fully get into the whole race routine. Traveling to meets allows us/forces us to take the effort more seriously. Also, we have to travel to get the top end competition that really pushes us past what we could do in a workout in Madison. I think we would have trouble attracting the caliber of competition that we will see tonight to Madison. With that said, we would like to have some pretty good guys come to Madison that weekend of May 10th. So, I invite/challenge anyone who wants a good mile effort to come race.
