Eve Leads Women to Victory,
While Prevost's Win is Not Enough to Secure Men's Title
September 11, 2010
While the women definitely went out much too
fast at the start of the Engineer's
Cup at Franklin Park,
they managed to run faster than their opponents, securing
the victory with a score of 18 points to 57 for RPI and 63
for WPI. Katherine Eve '12, took individual honors,
leading from start to finish in a superb time of 18:39 on
the warm and windy day. Richard Prevost '11, passed
teammate Gihan Amarasiriwardena '11, in the final two tenths
of a mile to claim the victory in 26:39. MIT's 1-2
finish was not enough to secure the victory as RPI packed
in six runners between fourth and ninth to outscore MIT 30
to 38, while WPI came in at 69 points. MIT held out
three of their top four women as well as much of their second
group of runners while the men held out two of their top
three and three of their next four. The purpose was
to give everyone an opportunity to race while not over racing
anyone for the season. This strategy obviously did
not play out well in the men's race.
The MIT women uncharacteristically sprinted
across the field at the start, perhaps following Eve's lead
too closely, to easily take early command of the race. The
first mile split of 5:44 for Eve was much faster than planned,
but she felt fine so she went with it. The problem
was that Katy Gordon '11, came through in 5:48, and Casey
O'Brien '14, who was supposed to be with Gordon, was not
able to handle such a fast first mile. Fortunately,
Lauren Allen '13, Sarah Sprague '13, Chandler Burfield '13,
and Maggie Lloyd '12, were with the leaders from RPI and
WPI at 6:07, which was also a bit too fast, and certainly
they were running much slower than 6:07 pace at the time
they passed through the mile mark. Eve
continued to pull away, running the challenging second mile
in 6:12. Gordon
was fortunate to have the classic, "out of sight, out of
mind" scenario play out as she slowed to a 6:35 second mile
but still maintained a large lead. O'Brien faded, but
Allen, Sprague, Burfield and Lloyd moved up, distancing themselves
from their opponents with the exception of Vicky Hewey of
WPI, who broke up the MIT sweep with her third place finish.
The men ran a much smarter race, coming through
the mile mark in the planned 5:11 pace for Amarasiriwardena
and Matt Metlitz '14 and 5:14 for Prevost, Jacob Young '13
and Matt Weaver '12. The core group from RPI were running
well as a pack and ahead of MIT's second group of runners. The
second mile was too slow for all of the MIT runners, missing
the opportunity to close the meet early. However, by
the third mile mark, MIT was in the lead and in position
to take over the race. The problem was that RPI was
prepared for an 8K race, while it appeared MIT was only ready
for a 5K. Metlitz faded with a 5:36 fourth mile, while
Young was even worse with a 5:41. The RPI runners maintained
their group and took over the race in the fourth mile,
closing it out in the final mile. With the exception
of Prevost, Amarasiriwardena and Logan Trimble '13, who ended
up as MIT's fifth man in 27:28, everyone else continued to
fade in the fifth mile. The loss was the first for
MIT in the Engineer's Cup since 1996.
Next week, MIT travels to UMass Dartmouth in
North Dartmouth, Massachusetts for a large invitational pitting
many of New England's top Division III teams against one
another. This
will be the first time MIT will run the majority of their
top runners in the same race in 2010.
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