All Kristen Mohror wanted to do was make the last one enjoyable.
“I did the best that I could do,” said Mohror, a senior. “It was more about having fun and it being my last cross country race. I think it all worked out really well.”
Indeed it did.
More than 200 women competed in the race, and Mohror finished fourth at the National Intercollegiate Running Club Association Cross Country National Championships last Saturday in Bloomington, Ind.
Along with fellow senior Hayley Belli, Mohror led the Oregon women’s club running team to a second place finish in the team standings. The men’s team, meanwhile, finished 10th in the men’s standings.
Mohror finished with a time of 22:25 in the women’s 6,000 meter race, a personal record for her on the course.
“She had a really strong kick at the end,” Belli said of Mohror. “I think the competition was just really good this year. She looked like she was fit.”
Belli crossed the line in eighth place, less than a minute after Mohror, at 22:49.
Mohror and Belli stayed close to each other for the first part of the race, a tactic that helped motivate both runners.
“I feel like having Hayley in the front pack with me for the first mile and a half made me feel more comfortable and calmed me down,” Mohror said. “When I wanted to slow down, I didn’t because she was there. It helped a lot.”
Penn State overwhelmingly took the women’s team title, finishing 78 points ahead of the Ducks. The Nittany Lions had three women racers finish in the top five. Despite not finishing atop the team standings, the women’s team is more than pleased with its second-place finish.
“I think we pretty much knew Penn State was going to win because they have a really good team,” Belli said. “We were really excited to get second.”
The men weren’t “too satisfied as far as finishing 10th,” senior Gio Guzman said. They wanted to repeat history — when the Ducks last ran on this course three years ago, both the men’s and women’s team won national titles. This year, Michigan was crowned men’s champions.
The men still don’t look at the weekend with a completely subdued perspective. After all, they did improve on their 12th-place finish a year ago.
“We knew it was going to be tough going in,” Guzman said. “We tried our best.
“A lot of the freshmen we took and the younger guys, they definitely stepped up.”
Senior Gino Gaddini was the top Ducks runner in the men’s 8K race, finishing 23rd with a time of 27:05. The men’s race saw more than 450 runners cross the finish line.
“(Gaddini) was really consistent throughout,” Belli said. “He went out in that position and held it. That was good that he didn’t lose any placement.”
Unfamiliar terrain made the course one of the most challenging the Ducks have encountered.
“Racing in Oregon, we’re not really faced with a lot of hills,” Guzman said. “Most of our courses are flat, and in Indiana it was definitely a hilly (course) for sure.”
Knowing ahead of time where nationals would be held this year, the Ducks started preparing for the up-and-down landscape as early as last June.
“We knew it was hilly, so we had to adjust our training to what the course was going to be like,” Mohror said. “A lot of us did higher mileage. A lot of us ran a lot more hills.”
That extra work in the off-season paid off for the Ducks on Oct. 23 in Corvallis at the Beaver Classic, the last race before nationals.
Both the men and women’s teams finished third in the team standings, in addition to Mohror and Belli finishing second and eighth, respectively, in the women’s race.
The Beaver Classic was Belli’s season debut, yet she still pulled off a top-10 finish. Belli, a former member of Oregon’s varsity cross country team, credits her veteran know-how for her quick preparation for both races this year.
“I’ve been running for several years now, so I feel like I have some experience just from past years,” she said. “I felt ready to go.”
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