One of the most decorated athletes to ever attend Oregon did not get a chance to run in the Pacific-10 Championships a year ago due to injury.
This year, former U.S. junior national champion and current All-American Galen Rupp is healthy and looking forward to competing.
“It’s great,” Rupp said. “I wake up thankful every morning that I’m healthy and able to compete. Every day last year it seemed like there was some setback, and it’s frustrating when you can’t do what you love. Even though it was tough, I think it will help me this year because I know how much pain I can tolerate and push through.”
Earlier this season, Rupp finished second at the Bill Dellinger Invitational on Sept. 29 in a highly competitive field. The Men of Oregon won that meet, and Rupp earned a first-place finish his last time out, in the Oct. 14 Mike Hodges Invitational in Portland.
Rupp said the early season meets, specifically the Dellinger Invitational, have been beneficial to his training as he heads into Saturday’s Pacific-10 Championships at Stanford University.
“It’s good to see how you stack up against guys you know you’re going to see in the postseason,” Rupp said. “It also helps that I ran well and know that I can be right there at the end.”
Rupp and the No. 7-ranked men’s team figure to be in the mix for a Pac-10 team title. They will find stiff competition from the No. 5 Stanford Cardinal, hoping for their seventh straight Pac-10 championship, and Arizona, last year’s runner-up.
The Ducks are much improved as they enter the meet with a healthy Rupp, competing in the event for the first time, and sophomore transfer Shadrack Kiptoo-Biwott.
“Personally, I just want to do well,” Kiptoo-Biwott said. “Team wise, I’m just going to do the best I can to help the team be successful.”
Head coach Vin Lananna said he expects the men’s team to improve on last year’s sixth-place finish.
“I think we can improve quite a bit from last year’s finish,” Lananna said. “I hope we finish in the top three, and I think we can. I think we can do better than that.”
The women’s team finished third in last year’s conference championship, a conference Lananna regards as one of the country’s best. Stanford is the No. 1 women’s team in the nation.
“On the women’s side we’d like to be in the top four,” Lananna said.
Senior Dana Buchanan and sophomore Zoe Nelson finished 18th and 19th respectively last season.
Buchanan has been the women’s top runner for the majority of the season, with Nelson and junior Sarah Pearson consistently performing well.
The women have battled injuries all season long, and are nearing full health as they head into the Pac-10s.
“We have Nicole (Blood) and Bria (Wetsch) healthy and running again, which has been great,” Buchanan said. “We finished third last year and hope to be right there again.”
Rupp and Kiptoo-Biwott both should be among the lead group, Lananna said.
“We hope to do well as a team, and we’ll have a strategy that employs that,” Lananna said. “When it comes down to it they’ll have to get it done. Two low scores does well for us as a team.”
Rupp said that while his focus is on Pac-10s, he’d like to continue improving for the rest of the postseason.
“I hope to continue peaking through National’s and that’s where I’d like to run my best,” he said.