Even though track is an individual sport, the impact of a runner's teammates and competitors can make or break a race. While staying as a pack can help push a team to victory, focusing on opposing runners can disrupt a team's race plan.
On Saturday, at the Pre-National meet in Terra Haute, Ind., the men and women's cross country teams felt the benefits of running closely together and the consequences of letting the competition set the pace.
The women finished 28th of 41 teams with 794 points. The men were close to the women, with 749 points - 29th of 40 teams.
"It was a crazy race," men's coach Charlie Powell said. "It was so fast. There were a lot of guys that got really close to their personal bests at 3,000 meters on the way to 8,000 meters. That's how crazy it was."
Sam Chelanga of Liberty University won by 45 seconds with a time of 22:51.3. In an attempt to stay with Chelanga, many Penn runners started too fast and were unable maintain their speed at the finish.
"For us, going out extremely hard isn't smart because it will end up tiring you out, and it will make the rest of the race even harder," said sophomore Christopher Baird, who was third on the Quakers with a time of 25:19.5.
Powell added: "I wish it was more like basketball, where you could call a timeout and restart things, but you don't get a chance to do that because they were flying so fast. It was unbelievable."
Sophomore Luke Grau, Penn's top finisher at 24:59.0, attributed some of his dissatisfaction with the meet to his distance from his teammates.
"Trying to stay together in races is a big thing," he said. "This meet was a little more separated, especially towards the end."
The women's team, however, stayed as a pack, which helped individual accomplishments.
"Even though we were not all together, we tried to find each other throughout the race," senior Kinjal Parikh said. "I think it went really well. A lot of girls stepped up."
One of the runners who improved was senior Leah Brogan, who finished first on Penn and 54th overall at 21:19.7; at last year's Pre-Nationals, she finished 93rd.
She thrived in the high-pressure environment on Saturday.
"It was good nerves," Brogan said. "It was the kind of nerves that you wanted.
Both the men and women are using this race an indicator of how they will preform in Heptagonals on Oct. 31st.
"Heps is our most important race, and we have to gear up for that right now," Harris said. "We need to finish."
