I actually have high hopes for NAZ Elite. Kiptoo and Wildschutt (honestly also Masai) have had incredible finishes at NCAA cross, and Hacker is fresh off an NCAA 5K title. I think any of those four could beat McDonald.
I enjoyed watching Wildschuut, Kiptoo, Masai and Hacker in college and really hope they put it together in their pro careers. It seems like NAZ Elite is a team that people go to and then are never heard from again.
I actually have high hopes for NAZ Elite. Kiptoo and Wildschutt (honestly also Masai) have had incredible finishes at NCAA cross, and Hacker is fresh off an NCAA 5K title. I think any of those four could beat McDonald.
I enjoyed watching Wildschuut, Kiptoo, Masai and Hacker in college and really hope they put it together in their pro careers. It seems like NAZ Elite is a team that people go to and then are never heard from again.
Think this might change some with Culpepper in instead of Rosario as the coach now. But I kind of disagree, I mean there’s Fauble and Linkletter (I know they left but they did develop)
My prediction was supa wrong, but OAC looks great right now. Kurgat and Kiptoo closed a 10 second gap to Hoare so fast that I almost missed it. Kiptoo fell off pretty hard after a bit, but I think he'd have done a lot better if he hadn't made the move to try to win. I thought Hoare would be top 2 for OAC, but Nuguse was a surprise to me.
McDonald and Beamish jogged across the line. I'm really looking forward to what they can both do this year, it looks like Ritz finally has them both healthy and training really well. I'm not really sure what I should expect, but supposedly Geordie is up to 90mpw now. He won NCAAs on 3 weeks of running, so if he's healthy through the summer I think he's at least as good as the rest of the group. I remember Morgan wanted to run sub-13 back in 2021 before he got injured. I think people forget just how great he was in college. He ran 13:15 almost 18 months before he won his first NCAA title. I wasn't too sure before, but now I think sub-13 could definitely happen this year.
Both the races were fun to watch. The announcing was good. The course was OK, I would like even more Euro style courses. Glad to see OAC do well. It would be awesome for a November & December 3-4 race pro series.
Not sure how a 35 minute women's 5 miler got in, her past results indicated... that she would run about 35 minutes.
There were a handful of guys lapped, but I don't know where they went in the results, no one showed more than 4 minutes slower than Kurgat (1 mile laps).
Both the races were fun to watch. The announcing was good. The course was OK, I would like even more Euro style courses. Glad to see OAC do well. It would be awesome for a November & December 3-4 race pro series.
Not sure how a 35 minute women's 5 miler got in, her past results indicated... that she would run about 35 minutes.
There were a handful of guys lapped, but I don't know where they went in the results, no one showed more than 4 minutes slower than Kurgat (1 mile laps).
It was a mickey mouse course. These pros deserve better.
Update: Wejo wrote up a little piece on the press conference from yesterday. The OAC guys in particular talked a lot about the course saying ""A True Cross Country Course" "I'm Scared People Are Going to Fall Over"
Plus talk of the tough 10,000m qualifying standards.
You might want to tell Wejo that the course has hay bales (not barrels). WTF is a hay barrel? Did Wejo get his info from a poorly connected phone call?