On May 27th in Marion, Indiana, three TEAM members were ready to go after more medals in the NAIA Outdoor Championships over 5,000m's. Coming off of very strong indoor seasons where all three of them medalled, Katie, Janelle and Chris were excited to see how they could do.
First up was the women's race. Both girls were going into the race with very different stories. Katie was in the best shape of her life and was coming off of a strong 20km PR a few months earlier and Janelle unfortunately had to get knee surgery following a tear in her meniscus after the indoor season.
Katie started off the race with the leaders and was going strong until the last few laps when the other two girls had an extra gear and Katie simply couldnt respond. Katie finished in a very impressive 3rd place in a big PR, walking 23:51.83. Katie may have come 3rd but she was the 1st American as 1st place was from Canada and 2nd place was from Hong Kong. Janelle unfortunately was having a lot of pain during the race and was forced to drop out.
Chris came into this race with a lot of unknowns. His training had been up and down since the Indoor Championships. He had a good performance over 20km's in March and from then on it was very inconsistent. Luckily the day of the race was an up day and did he ever surprise a lot of people. Chris had the same race plan as he did indoors. He focused on his own race and slowly kept moving his way up. He kept getting faster and passing everyone infront of him. He managed to catch everyone except for Canadian Evan Dunfee who broke the meet record. Chris finished in 2nd place in a huge PR of 20:42.02. All three of our NAIA TEAM members had very impressive seasons and we look forward to more in the rest of the season.
Stay tuned!
TEAM
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