Oregon head coach Vin Lananna has a good idea of what he’s going to see at the Cardinal Invitational. After all, he was the coach at Stanford from 1992 to 2003, where he helped develop the meet into the high-quality event it is today.
So he knows that if he wants his athletes to run against top-flight competition, this Sunday’s meet in Palo Alto, Calif., is the place to do it.
“What we’re trying to do is go down there, with good competition and good conditions and see if we can get some good marks on the board,” he said. “I’m pretty familiar with how the meet runs and all that stuff, so I think we’ll be ready to put something on the board this weekend.”
Instead of taking a full contingent of sprinters, distance runners, throwers and jumpers, the Ducks will only be taking a small group of middle distance and distance runners with two main intentions. They hope to improve qualifying times and also to get more practice in competitive racing situations.
“They haven’t been in a race where there’s been this level of competition this season,” Lananna said, “and they’re going to soon get to the Pac-10s and the NCAAs and the regional meet, so this will be something to prepare them for that.”
Only two women are going to run at Stanford, Zoe Buckman in the 800m and Alex Kosinski in the 1,500m.
Buckman currently has the 28th-fastest time in the country at 2:07.39, while Kosinski has the 16th-fastest 1,500m at 4:19.88.
While track racing is not new to Kosinski, she said she still has parts of the race to work on.
“This will help me to work on racing strategies because I’m not really good at racing with people around me that are my same speed, because I get myself boxed in and do a bunch of stuff,” she said. “It will also help me with running with people around.”
The men are sending a bigger group of runners to the Cardinal Invitational, including Andrew Wheating in the 800m and A.J. Acosta in the 1,500m. The two are coming off big performances last weekend at the Oregon Relays – Wheating won the mile in 3:58.16 and Acosta ran a personal-best 13:50.20 in the 5,000m.
Lananna said another hope for some Ducks this weekend is to set themselves up for after the NCAA season.
“We certainly have the goal in a meet like this to try and see if we can get several of the athletes to hit either the ‘B’ or the ‘A’ standard for the Olympic Trials,” he said.
Galen Rupp, who is redshirting this season, is scheduled to run the 10,000m. At the 2007 Cardinal Invitational, he set the American collegiate record, finishing in 27:33.48.
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