This weekend is considered pre-nationals and many big time meets will be taken place across the country! A&M will host the Arturo Barrios Invitational with over 30 schools and nearly 300 competitors per gender! Racing in a huge field is a lot more difficult regardless the competition, so hopefully our runners can get out fast and not get caught in a cluster of runners! I'm really interested to see if our girls can get out fast and stick together to push one another to the end! In big fields, runners 1-5 are all important and runners 4/5 can't afford to fall back cause the big numbers will add up!
Eric Casarez should continue his dominance as always, but let's see which of our men's runners can establish themselves as our consistent runners in the 2-5 slot!
Our women will look to keep their winning streak alive! Our girls last ran a 6k in Mizzou 6 days after a 5k at home. So expect an even stronger performance! Look out for all 5 of Black, Goddard, Santoro, Livingston, and Plain to stay close the whole race and let it rip down the homestretch in front of the 12th man! Livingston and Plain fell off their pace last race which was expected after a short turnaround, but running fresh watch them close really well, as well as Santoro who took the last home meet off before running well in Mizzou!
A big meet in Tallahassee is also taking place where regional foes Arkansas and Texas will compete! Arkansas is way ahead of us in cross country, but it's going to be interesting to see where Texas is at as that would be our competition for the second auto bid to nationals.
Sorry if my cross country commentating isn't as detailed and in depth as track, I'm trying to become a better cross country fan/armchair distance coach lol