October 12, 2001

Maybe it was taking a week off from racing after competing for five consecutive weekends, or perhaps the fact that most had a class earlier in the morning or maybe it was just a lack of proper mental preparation. Whatever it was, MIT's men's cross country team did not do as well as expected. However, Dan Feldman and Sean Nolan ran good races given the 75 degree temperatures and the suffocating dirt stirred up by the runners on the extremely dry course.

MIT placed 12th out of 42 schools, placing 3rd amond Division III schools in the NEIAAA Championship, otherwise known as the All New England Championship. Ranked 15th in the country among Division III schools before race time and 4th in New England, MIT did slightly better than expected by their opposing teams, but not as well as they would have liked. A normal delta of 1:30 for runners 1-5, Tech could do no better than 2:13, causing them to lose approximately 50 points by that factor alone.

Feldman got pulled out to an early quick pace of 4:41 for the 1st mile, but was wise enough to stay well behind the leaders, who went out in 4:24. Nolan, possibly intuitively expecting the heat to have some effect, went out a little slower than planned, coming through in 4:56. The rest of the top 5 came through in the planned 5:00.

By mile 2, Dan had moved up to 12th and was looking strong. The entire front group had slowed down considerably, letting most of the pack back into the race. Dan, catching up with the leaders, did not run as he planned, but slowed to their pace once catching them, possibly hurting his overall place. Nolan continued to move up as he ran his plan perfectly. Sean Montgomery, Albert Liu, Brian Anderson and Ben Schmeckpeper slowed down too much in the 2nd mile, possibly being lulled into thinking they were still running fast due to how quickly everyone in front was slowing down. By mile two, there was already a 40 second delta.

Mile three continued to be good ones for Feldman and Nolan and too slow for the rest of MIT's runners. With the delta now up to one minute it was obvious the team score would not be very good.

Feldman moved up to 7th by the four mile marker, but got outkicked by two Harvard runners in the final 400 meters to finish a very respectable 9th, the top Division III runner. Nolan continued to pass people, finishing with a 4:52 final mile to move up to 32nd place. Montgomery, who had not raced for a month due to a leg injury, had lost focus during the 4th mile, but finished strong to finish 94th, 1:37 behind Feldman. Usually, Montgomery is within 40 seconds of Dan, so there is hope he will get it together again by the end of the season. Liu finished :01 behind Montgomery, but that was enough for three opposing runners to squeeze in between them to put Liu back in 98th place. Anderson stepped up to replace a hurting Schmeckpeper, but was nevertheless over 2:00 back of Feldman.

With all their woes, MIT was still able to finish ahead of Keene State (14th) and Williams College (15th). Coach Halston Taylor indicated his team had a lot of work to do to get to where they need to be in four weeks. Their next meet is the NEWMAC conference championship at Franklin Park on October 27th at 2:45. Both Coast Guard Academy and WPI promise to give the Engineers some worries if they cannot put a better team effort together.