By Sean Morgan
sean-morgan@uiowa.edu
Heading into Madison, Wis., on Oct. 3, no one would have faulted the Iowa men’s cross-country team for being excited, let alone nervous.
After all, Iowa was one of the few unranked squads entering the No. 4 ranked Wisconsin Badgers’ home course — one no Hawkeye has ever set foot on.
From what Iowa’s runners had been told, it was to be the most physically demanding course they had ran on all year.
“It’s supposed to be a lot more hilly than we are used to,” said freshman Jeff Thode a day before the Wisconsin Inter Regional. “You have to attack the flats and the downhill parts, then take it easy on the uphill parts.”
Whatever Thode and company did, it worked. Thode finished second overall, and the Hawkeyes finished 5th in the team rankings.
Iowa head coach Larry Weiczorek is pleasantly suprised to say the least.
“We were a couple points behind Arkansas, who is number one in their region,” Weiczorek said. “We have a two point plan now. One, keep the guys running at an elite level to continue performing, and two, to get the guys who are nicked up back. If we can put that together, we could be pretty good.”
The tough terrain mixed with the high-pressure event could have posed a real problem for a young Iowa team. The Hawkeyes were also dealing with a string of walking wounded in Sam Bailin, Nick Holmes and Brendan Camplin, who did not compete in the meet.
Holmes, Bailin, and Camplin are among Iowa’s top five finishers this year. Responsibility for keeping the squad focused and grounded fell on cocaptains Tommy Tate and Camplin, the most veteran members of the team.
“You can get jacked up and let the environment get to you,” Camplin said. “Then you start off too fast in the race and end up losing. It can happen to a lot of people.
“It happened to me at the Big Ten championships last year. The whole environment got to me.”
Tate said the individual nature of cross-country running can lead to younger runners becoming overwhelmed quickly.
“In a race, you’re pretty much on your own,” Tate said. “If you start off too fast, you can go into oxygen debt fast. That’s when you go anaerobic, and you start building lactic acid, and your muscles go into fatigue too early.”
Tate and Camplin, along with head coach Larry Wieczorek, had been trying to keep things normal all week. They ran the same number of miles and treated the upcoming event as just the first stop in the road on a long season.
“It’s been business as usual all week for us,” Camplin said before the meet. “We are just trying to keep things like we have been — 90 to 95 miles a week. We have been trying to tell [the underclassmen] that it’s just more of the same.”
Tate has a pre-race routine he goes through to help settle his nerves.
“I try to picture the race in my mind,” he said. “I go through the whole thing, trying to visualize making moves, passing certain people. I try to lead by example, try to keep everyone on schedule and sticking to the same routines that have been helping [the veterans] since we’ve been here.”
