“We said our last goodbyes to the championship trophy while browsing the whiskey aisle at the Liquor Barn.  We might have lost the meet, but we definitely won the after party!”

–

Juliane Masciana is a 9:59-steeplechaser for Club Cross Country defending champions Rogue Athletic Club. “I take real pictures,” she says. You can see more of her work, and like her Facebook fanpage.

The post Juliane’s Club Cross, Day 3: Tears in My Beer appeared first on The Trailer.

Muddy, lumpy, fast, and hilly; Kentucky knows how to throw a cross country race.

by The Trailer

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The 2012 Club Cross Country Championships were everything cross country is supposed to be: it was wet, it was muddy, it went out hard and was decided on the hills. And at the end, it was Mattie Suver of Boulder Running Company and Jacob Riley of Hansons-Brooks Distance Project as open women’s and men’s champions.

Suver, a University of Oregon grad (’10), came into the race just wanting to crack the top 10. She’d been sick, she says, and the last time she’d run cross was as an undergrad.

But as the race went through 4K, Suver found herself leading BRC teammate Briana Nelson and 4:06-1,500m girl Katie Mackey.

“I knew I had to go early because some of those girls have a good kick,” Suver says. “I made a move with 600 [meters] to go, hoping I could hold them off. Yeah, it worked.”

Nelson would also move early, coming through the final straight with a clear gap on Mackey of Club Northwest. Meghan Peyton of Team USA Minnesota, Ladia Albertson-Junkans, and Addie Bracy of Team Scoe Wear would round out the top six.

(And speaking of that top six, each receives an invitation to represent the U.S. at the Bupa Great Edinburgh Cross Country race in Edinburgh, Scotland, on January 5.)

“I’ve heard [Scotland] is really rainy, so it will probably be pretty similar to here,” Suver says. “Maybe a little more mud, a little more rain. It should be fun.”

And though she’s not sure what Scottish food tastes like, she’s pretty sure she’ll enjoy it on her first national team.

In the team standings, Team USA Minnesota, led by Peyton, finished easily number one, 68-88 over last year’s runners-up Boulder Running Company (low score wins). Team New Balance Boston was third with 94, and 2011 team champs Rogue Athletic Club were fourth with 98.

Jacob Riley has had a busy couple of months, though he claims they’ve still been pretty quiet: third in the USA 10-Mile Championships and part of the third-place U.S. team for the Chiba Ekiden in Japan, Riley says that leading the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project men to a team win makes his individual win that much sweeter.

“This has been on our schedule for a long time. We’ve been looking forward to it,” he says. “That makes the party after the race a whole lot better.”

Speaking with coaches Keith and Kevin Hanson before the race, Riley says the plan was to stay away from being the aggressor during the first half—that role was filled by Andy Wacker of Boulder Running Company.

But when the men entered the second lap of the 10K race, Riley looked around, and he saw Craig Forys. “I’d already been beaten once by Craig Forys’ kick,” Riley says, “and I didn’t want that to happen again. I didn’t want some guy to have a free ride and get me in the end.”

So Riley began pushing on the downhills and forcing the lead pack to catch him on the uphills. Mentally and physically it’s draining, he says. Entering the third lap, he pushed harder on the downs, opening up bigger gaps, and going into mile 5, “No one closed it up,” he says. “No one was on my shoulder again.”

Riley would take the win in 29:58 unchallenged in the last straight.

Behind, Forys would hold for second, followed by Wisconsin alum Elliot Krause. Matthew Forys (brother of Craig), Jonathan Peterson, and 2010 USA 20K Champ Sean Quigley were the top six.

In the team competition, the HBDP made short work of the rest, scoring 50 to the Asics Aggies’ 77. Last year’s runners-up Boulder Running Company were third with 106, and in fourth was the New York Athletic Club with 122.

The post Suver, Riley Roll to Club Cross Titles appeared first on The Trailer.

“Went to preview the course in the rain and had the starting line all to ourselves. Spiked up, did a few strides, practiced our race day chant (I don’t want to give it away, but let’s just say it helped the Dillon Panthers win state), then took these photos. We did a double take!

“The bow-making starts tonight after dinner. Excited and ready for tomorrow!”

–

Juliane Masciana is a 9:59-steeplechaser for Club Cross Country defending champions Rogue Athletic Club. “I take real pictures,” she says. You can see more of her work, and like her Facebook fanpage.

The post Juliane’s Club Cross, Day 2: Grass and Air appeared first on The Trailer.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.  The crew gets all fired up for USATF club cross country with special guest and cross country’s nemesis, Addie Bracy. We chat about the virtues of a Louisville weekend, and the latest news we find interesting.  It’s Trailer time: get in.

In this episode:
* Adam Nelson is still our favorite, even if he’s Olympic champ.
* Jon is talked into another, err, unique racing experience, complete with swears.
* Addie sheds some light on her true feelings for the hill and dale of xc.
* It did not rain a drop on Daniel Tapia at CIM in Sacramento.
* The advantages of selecting your sponsors wisely: Scoe Gear (order via email)
* USATF is a not the NBA. Yet.
* The skinny on club xc and why 50 year old engineers make the best teammates.

Need a little more Addie Bracy in your life?  Check out her exclusive prior to the Chicago Marathon. You can also see more of her on her blog or enjoy her on twitter. 

BIG THANKS to ZB Savoy and the Chivalry for providing this episode’s music, “Bad Decisions”. You might not sing like ‘em, but you can dress like ‘em.

The post Episode 10: Reasons we love club xc, winter marathons, USATF update, and Addie Bracy gets in. appeared first on The Trailer.

“It’s been a crazy travel day. I’m sending two pictures because I couldn’t decide. I like the second photo [above] better.

“The caption can be something like, ‘Hungry and tired, the Rogues finally arrive in Lexington. After a layover in Atlanta the team is ready to get a move-on settling in for the night.’”

–

Juliane Masciana is a 9:59-steeplechaser for Club Cross Country defending champions Rogue Athletic Club. “I take real pictures,” she says. You can see more of her work here.

The post Juliane’s Club Cross, Day 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles appeared first on The Trailer.

Rogue Athletic Club’s women return to Club Cross to defend their 2011 title.

by The Trailer

AUSTIN, Tex. – The Rogue Athletic Club women came into the 2011 Club Cross Country Championships—their first time ever at the meet—with a plan. That plan immediately went to crap when their first girl fell at the starting line.

“She was the girl who was supposed to lead the team out,” says RAC head coach Steve Sisson. “She went right down on her face, laid there, and the entire field fell overtop of her.

“At that moment, based on my experience, I was like, ‘Well, we’re dead.’”

It was an inauspicious start that would somehow develop into an RAC route over the field. Their top five women ended with a first-to-fifth spread of three seconds at the end of the 6K course, finishing 12-13-14-17-18. The final score was 74-103 over Boulder Running Company.

What took place between the start and finish is something that Sisson still remembers fondly. Left without their lead, “They used each other in a way that we hadn’t even prepped for.”

Their marathoner—a late addition to the team since she’d raced a half marathon the week before—ran out of her mind to finish as their second. The girl he thought would be their number four closed well and became their number one. And their fallen runner, who by the time she got back to her feet Sisson says was DFL, would claw her way back to his team third and 20^th overall.

But what that Club Cross win did for his team is something Sisson says he’s still seeing the effects of: “That really galvanized those girls and made them realize, wow, we need each other. That win and the way that they did it truly catapulted a team dynamic that I could never have hoped to create on my own.”

On Saturday, December 2, in Lexington, Ky., RAC returns to the 2012 Club Cross Championships to defend their title. But while they have the same desire as last year, their team is drastically different. Three of RAC’s top five are no longer with the club, and Sisson says he can’t tell with any certainty who his top woman will be—one of three, he says.

But there is one of those three who, whether she is the top or not, the other women look to.

Juliane Masciana is the type of girl who brings the booze. A 2009 Cal State Fullerton grad with a 9:59 steeple best, she joined RAC in October of 2011 and promptly got injured. With two weeks of training, Sisson says she “demanded” to go to Club Cross.

On the train ride to the meet, he remembers seeing a bottle of champagne smuggled in Masciana’s bag.

“I showed it to all the girls,” Masciana says, “and they said, ‘Well, now we have to win.”

“That epitomizes Juliane,” Sisson says. “She brings a confidence and a leadership style that’s not going to demand anything but has an expectation.”

Masciana says that on Saturday RAC will win, just like she predicted last year. And it’s not as cocky as you think.

“I feel like sometimes we get so wrapped up in what we’re doing and everyday life that we forget the fact that we are really talented and we came here to run, and we sacrificed a lot to run, and we need to just be confident in that,” she says. “In our minds there’s no reason why we shouldn’t win.”

RAC will square off again with Boulder Running Company’s squad, as well a stacked team from Team USA Minnesota led by 4:12 1,500m girl Heather Kampf. If they do win, it will require the same luck they had last year. But even then, Masciana’s not worried.

“This is more of a fun thing,” she says. “If we win, we win; if we don’t, we don’t. This is a speed bump on the road to bigger and better things.”

–

Juliane Masciana took these pretty pictures and more you can see here. She will be taking pictures throughout the weekend to post on the Rogue Athletic Club blog. Whet your appetite with her photostory from 2011.

The post Luckier in Kentucky: The Rogue Athletic Club Women appeared first on The Trailer.

It’s official: there is a former 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the shot put, which makes silver medalist Nelson only a few words away.

by The Trailer; interview by Josh Muxen

LAUSANNE – Word has come down from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the four athletes whose samples came back positive in a retroactive drug test from the 2004 Olympics in Athens will have their medals stripped.

Shot put gold medalist Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine was one of those athletes, which means that pending the IOC’s announcement, gold will pass to the 2004 silver medalist, American Adam Nelson.

The Trailer previously spoke with Nelson before the IOC’s ruling.

The Trailer’s Josh Muxen caught Nelson before a flight to comment on today’s news .

–

Josh Muxen: Just read your tweet (“I now know what it feels like to win a lifetime achievement award posthumously. #playtrue #2004gold”). Congrats on what appears to be a gold medal for 2004. How did you hear about the news?

Adam Nelson: Thanks. I was on the phone and the person I was speaking with told me that a news bulletin was just released stating the IOC was banning four medalists, and as a result I will be receiving the gold.

JM: That’s fantastic news. What first went through your mind: relief, excitement?

AN: Mostly general excitement. To be honest, it feels really strange and it’s a weird feeling. I’ve heard the rumors before and have not given the rumors much credit until an official ruling. Now that it’s happened I’m excited. It is all just sinking in. You know, I feel I excited as I did to not lose that event [in 2004]; I was second on a tie-breaker. I feel good that I will always be the person who threw farthest on that day.

JM: What does this say about the vigilance of the IOC?

AN: I applaud the IOC and WADA  (World Anti-Doping Agency) in their process, and this sends a message to cheaters that they can still be caught after 8 years. I hope it continues to stop the cheaters’ actions, and the process only works if the IOC and WADA continue to be steadfast and improve the testing process to protect innocent athletes.

JM: If you were to see Bilonog, how do you think you would react?

AN: I would look at him with shame. I wouldn’t shake his hand and would not acknowledge him. He is a criminal and has robbed athletes. In any other profession these criminals would be prosecuted, but in our sport they merely get banned.

JM: Have you had a chance to talk to your family?

AN: Yeah, I spoke with my wife and brother, and they are both very excited.

JM: Again, congrats on the fantastic news. We at The Trailer, as well as track and field fans worldwide, are thrilled to hear you are finally getting the gold.

AN: Thanks, Josh.

JM: And don’t think just because you are a gold medalist now that this is going to get you out of running the Bay Area XC meet.

AN: (Laughs) If I can make it out there, we’ll talk.

–

Adam Nelson is two-time Olympic silver medalist (pending the IOC’s announcement, a gold and silver Olympic medalist) and was the 2005 Worlds champ. CONGRATULATE HIM ON TWITTER.

The post Adam Nelson Speaks. Again. appeared first on The Trailer.

Luckier in Kentucky

Matt Levassiur and the Boulder Running Company team almost pulled an upset in 2011 Club Cross. They return in 2012 as a contender.

by The Trailer

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – No question: The marquis team in the 2011 Cross Country Championships, held in Seattle, Wash., was McMillanElite. The Flagstaff, Ariz.-based group was armed with:

• Two (2) sub-2:12 marathoners
• Two (2) sub-29:00 10,000m guys
• One (1) 13:31 5,000m guy
• Defending Club Cross Champ Aaron Braun

McMillanElite was a juggernaut. They were a Goliath. And they almost got beat by a no-name team from Colorado.

When the final score was tallied, McMillanElite won 72-80 (low score in cross country wins) over Boulder Running Company/adidas thanks to massive jumps by McMillan’s Braun and Brett Gotcher over the last 2K loop. But it was the spread between first and fifth for both teams—the benchmark for team competition—that is most revealing in how close the battle was.

Between McMillanElite’s first and fifth was a spread of 1 minute, 3 seconds. BRC’s was 35 seconds.

Matt Levassiur, a 2:18:58 marathoner on the BRC team who had PRed at Chicago two months before the race and would compete in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials Marathon a month later, still laughs about it. “It was the first cross country race I had run since, jeez, I think 2007 U.S. Cross,” he says.

Levassiur wasn’t BRC’s top man. He wasn’t even their second man. Coming in third on the team, he was 25^th, and he expects to come in around the same place at this year’s Club Cross in Lexington, Ky., on Saturday, Dec. 8, when his club returns hungry for their first national title.

The 31-year-old high school English teacher, who has a wife and two-year-old daughter waiting for him back home, says, “When you’re out there it’s like you’re 16 again, lining up for your high school cross country team; you’re 19 again, lining up for your college cross country team.

“Kids fresh out of college and people that are doing it locally . . . you have people running at all sorts of different ability levels. You have the best of a lot of disciplines—track and the road running and marathoning—lining up at the same place.”

There are two big post-collegiate cross country races in the U.S. The most important, the U.S. Cross Country Championships, selects a World Cross Country Championships team, and the results are individually based. But Club Cross is all about the team, and though there are individual winners with their own credentials—2011 World Championships bronze-medalist Matt Centrowitz was fourth last year, and American Record-holder Alan Webb is currently on the start list for this year’s race—the real competition lies with groups like BRC that fly in from all over the country.

And that’s how BRC almost upset a professional running team: in 2011 they weren’t the most individually talented; they were just the best team.

“If you have a group of guys that are willing to go out there and aim for that 15 to 30^th place, you can have a pretty good squad,” Levassiur says. “And that’s where our team is at.”

Leading BRC this year is 24-year-old Andy Wacker, a Colorado alum with a 29:10.89 10,000m best. But Levassiur says the team’s ages range from 21 to older than him, and none of them are running full-time.

“We’re not out of a Bruce Springsteen song; we’re not from Jersey,” he says, “but all of us have regular jobs. Running is something that is an outlet for us, and we’re still able to do it reasonably well.”

BRC will face off against California’s Aggie Running Club, led by 2:14-marathoner Sergio Reyes. Former men’s champ Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, from Rochester Hills, Mich., also sends a deep team.

But Levassiur still thinks they have more than a good shot at their first team title. “I’m going to make a bold prediction: I really can’t see us not winning,” he says.

“What happens at Club is what happens at [NCAA] D-I Nationals: You go out in the top-10 and you really go for it, chances are you’re going to blow up and finish in the 40s and 50s,” he says.

“Our goal is to win, and we’re going to run like that.”

–

This isn’t the first time Matt Levassiur has talked into a microphone; he had an excellent Day-in-the-Life put together by Running Times Magazine before the 2012 Olympic Team Trials Marathon. Boulder Running Company/adidas has a blog and a Twitter they’ll be updating during their Club Cross campaign. 

The post Luckier in Kentucky: The Boulder Running Company Men appeared first on The Trailer.

East Coast/West Coast Rap Battles with Emily Infeld

The 11-time All American has snuck from east to west for Kara, Shalane, and OTC Portland

by The Trailer

PORTLAND, Ore. – Emily Infeld, born in 1990, is too young to remember the East Coast/West Coast hip hop rivalry in the mid-‘90s—which makes word associations that much more fun.

Notorious B.I.G.: “Rapper,” she says.

Puff Daddy: “A big, white, puffy coat,” Infeld says, adding, “I’m going to be terrible at this game.”

Bad Boy Records: “Is that Eminem? No, that’s Jay-Z. Is that Jay-Z?”

It may not exactly be fair to associate the 22-year-old Georgetown alum with either coast, hip hop or otherwise—she was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. But after the last four years, during which she led the Hoyas to their first-ever NCAA Cross Country Championship in 2011 (and her own individual title in the 3000m indoors in 2012), Infeld has embodied the east so completely that you forget where she’s from.

After her eighth-place finish in the 2012 Olympic Team Trials 5,000m, Infeld had planned on returning to campus in the fall. She had a season of indoors and outdoors remaining under women’s cross country coach Chris Miltenberg, and she’d been accepted for a grad program in Sports Industry Management.

Then Miltenberg moved.

The news came on August 27^th. Miltenberg announced his acceptance of the position of Director of Track and Field at Stanford University. Georgetown announced they would begin a national search immediately. And with her coach’s move, Emily Infeld considered making her own announcement.

“I don’t think I was as interested in [Sports Industry Management]; it was more so the means for me to be running there,” she says. “And I know that sounds terrible to say, but I think my heart just wasn’t really in it.”

Miltenberg’s announcement was to Infeld’s resolve—already shaky—the final nail in the coffin.

“In order to take that next big leap I had to change and go find something else,” she says.

The seed of Infeld’s final destination had already been planted in June by Jerry Schumacher, coach of Oregon Track Club Portland. Schumacher was already coaching a Georgetown grad, 13:16.26 5,000m runner Andrew “Bumby” Bumbalough, who joined in 2010, and through that connection Schumacher and Miltenberg had been communicating throughout the last year.

With parents, little sister, and coach Miltenberg, Infeld sat down with Schumacher in Eugene during the Trials in June the day after her 5,000m result, a PR 15:28.60.

“I was just super-excited that he wanted to meet with me,” Infeld says. “He’s obviously such a well-renown coach and has had so much success. I felt really honored.”

At the time Infeld was still committed to returning to Georgetown in the fall—Miltenberg had not yet been hired by Stanford, and her grad picture was already on the website—so Schumacher tap-danced gracefully: he knew she had collegiate eligibility; he invited her out for a visit; he said he’d love to coach her whenever she was ready.

When Miltenberg left for California at the end of the summer, Infeld decided she’d take Schumacher up on his offer.

Infeld’s visit was in the last weekend of September. She stayed at a hotel near the downtown; she walked around, taking in the feel. Flanagan would pick her up every morning, and with Goucher the pair of Olympians showed Infeld the trails and gave her a tour of the Nike campus. (“I’m used to having minimal-everything—we shared a locker room with four other teams. Compared to Georgetown I was in awe,” Infeld says.)

“It was crazy to see how these elite runners are so normal, and they’re so nice and welcoming and enthusiastic, and just awesome people in general,” Infeld says. “They wanted me to make sure I was making the best decision for me. They were looking out for me and wanting to see that I was doing what would make me happy.”

While she took the next 10 days to make her decision, visiting Eugene and Colorado Springs, Infeld says her heart was already set. She returned to D.C. and started to pack: “I knew at that point that I wouldn’t be going back to Georgetown.”

Infeld has been in Portland with the OTC for just over three weeks, and she’s still as confident that the move was the best thing she could have done.

“If I want to make a big leap and be great, I think that I need to be one hundred percent committed—which I wasn’t in college,” she says. “I think I’m ready at this point. I don’t want to do anything else.”

 –

Emily Infeld’s fill-in-the-blanks:

1. The West Coast is: “the best coast.”
2. The East Coast is: “J.Crew.”
3. Ohio is: “the farm. And terrible sports.”

You can follow her new life as a pro on Twitter.

The post East Coast/West Coast Rap Battles with Emily Infeld appeared first on The Trailer.

Tapia, Williams Grind Out Cal International Wins

Yes, the weather sucked. It was still a race. (And a good one.)

by The Trailer

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Here is a list of free associations on the weather for the 2012 California International Marathon:

•  Vietnam during the rainy season (the country, not the war)
• Salamanders
• “Musty”
• Wet iPhones
• Shaggy dog

Despite deluge-like conditions, CIM was still a race, and soon after it started it was apparent that mile spits were irrelevant (especially since half of the markers had blown over under 30 mph gusts). The patient would win, and Patience’s name was Daniel Tapia in 2:16:30.

“It’s a long time coming,” says coach Chris Zepeda, who Tapia, 24, raced for at Hartnell College in Salinas. “This is the type of day that shows you the toughest runner, the guy that just grinds out miles day after day after day, has an equal chance to win.”

Tapia came into the race with a mere 2:15:26 PR, set at the 2012 Olympic team trials in January. By time he was seeded 12^th pre-race among men.

Didn’t matter.

Tapia, tucked into the back of pack, was sheltered from the headwind during the early stages of the course. As man after man fell off the pace, he was one of the last standing. East Africans Tesfaye Alemayehu of Ethiopia and Christopher Kipyego of Kenya moved at 23 miles, and Tapia went.

“If I die, I die—at least I’m going to be top three,” Tapia says. “I didn’t; I just felt strong.”

Tapia may have been reactive in the early stages, but in the most critical he was the aggressor. When the lead vehicle sped off to the finish at 24 miles, Tapia, attacking, had already broken Kipyego. It was down to two.

Tapia says, “I kept on going at 4:50 pace at the end. [Alemayehu] just couldn’t go with me.”

Tapia’s win breaks a long drought for Americans in Sacramento. Jerry Lawson was the last men’s winner in 1993, setting the course record of 2:10:27 en route. Though Tapia won in a more modest time, time was irrelevant; it was all about place.

“[The weather] made me very conservative,” Tapia says. “If it would have been 35 degrees with no headwind, I probably would have gone out fast like I did for my previous marathons, and I probably would have tanked at the end.

“With the weather we knew it was going to be survival of the fittest.”

Alemayehu would hold for second in 2:17:08, and Kipyego was third in 2:18:00. Jason Ordway, of Bellbrook, Ohio, was fourth overall and the second American in 2:18:10. 2:11-marathoner Nick Arciniaga led early, but faded to fifth in 2:18:37.

Alisha Williams and Clara Peterson Hang Out for 24 Miles. Again.

Williams, who was originally going to run the 2012 New York City Marathon, has had five workouts in the last four weeks since the race was cancelled. None them felt good.

“My coach [Scott Simmons, of the American Distance Project] just told me not to panic,” Williams says.

But she was worried, especially about the last 10K. Instead, she says, she felt awesome.

At the 2012 Olympic team trials debutantes Peterson and Williams ran side by side for 24 miles before finishing 16^th and 14^th, respectively. Williams’ coup de grace at CIM came again over the last two miles. She put 41 seconds on Peterson at the trials; at CIM it was 38 seconds.

Williams would claim her first marathon win in 2:34:58.

“We were pushing each other and keeping each other focused,” Williams says of Peterson. “In that weather I could see where it would be easy to just sit back and give up.

“I was terrified. I did not relax at all the last two miles. I had no idea where [Peterson] was, and I know how good of a runner she is. I didn’t want to leave it till the very end.”

Peterson was second in 2:35:36; Russia’s Natalia Sergeeva was third in 2:38:23. Avina Begay of Team USA Arizona, who competed in the World Half Marathon Championships in October, was fourth in 2:39:08.

“It is what it is; it’s a race, ultimately, so then you just focus on trying to win,” Williams says. “This is a huge win for me. I’ll take it.”

The post Tapia, Williams Grind Out Cal International Wins appeared first on The Trailer.