Big 12 Outdoor Quotes - Men's 10,000 Meter Finals
Men’s 10,000 Meters Champion
Kenyon Neuman,
General
“Anybody could have gone across the line first. I’m happier about the fact that we went one through five because that’s a good start for points for the team and we’re hoping that we’ll be in contention to compete for the title in
On The Fab Five
“That was from the start?we figured a lot of people might be intimidated by the altitude and would put their guys in shorter distances. We figured it would be pretty weak and if we put a good group of guys in there we could do well. We run close to 10K runs all the time and we know what we can run for those so we figured if we pushed it a little bit faster we could come home with four or five places. We figured the 10K would be weak because they would be intimidated by the altitude. A lot of times the 10K isn’t the strongest event. We just made a guess at it and put some guys in there that we thought could run a pretty good pace and get rid of some competitors. We did that and it worked out as planned?it doesn’t always happen like that.”
On The Crowd
“It was awesome?it was great having this at night with the lights and everything. The crowd was awesome?it’s great running here in
On The Pace Of The race
“We started out with a pace, at altitude, that we knew we could maintain based on conversions. Once we saw that people fell off we were going to slow it down so we could save ourselves for the 5K.”
On Team Approach
“Track titles are a big deal. We’ve never had a track team ranked so high. We think we have the potential to win this meet and I don’t think the men’s team has ever won the Big 12 meet. If we can do it here?if it just happens that the stars align and it’s in
Men’s 10,000 Meters Fourth Place Finisher
Chris Pannone,
General
“The plan was to run a certain pace, we were pretty fast but we want to be faster tomorrow. We started fast, then we slowed a little and then we finished fast. I was just trying to run the splits but I wasn’t doing all the great. Our whole plan was to finish one through five, that was our dream race because we could almost sweep it. So I had to get back up there, and around the 5k I was able to make a move. I wasn’t feeling all that great but I just wanted to make the last mile and once I got going I started feeling good. Hopefully I can come back on Sunday, contribute to the team and score some more points. Our goal is to win the whole conference meet so we need all the points we can get.”
On Placing Five High
“It was really special in indoors when we were able to place our guys at the top because that was my last indoor conference meet and this is my last outdoor conference meet. We’ve just been training so hard all year, after we disappointed during cross country. Now that it’s conference it all matters and we have put in a lot of work, especially over the winter. The freshman have really stepped up and been a nice addition to our team. It was nice to have the whole
Colorado Head Coach Mark Wetmore
On Colorado’s 10k Performance
“We knew we should have five guys do fairly well, I was confident we’d have five guys finish in the top eight and I knew if things went well we could score very high. The only way it is a surprise is when you’re asking all five guys to hit on all four cylinders.”
All Top-5 in the 10k
“Only one of the guys has ever ran the 10k before, and I kept reminding them to stay patient and stay controlled. A novice at that distance, at this elevation?even if you train here, racing here is a whole different animal and they could still blow it up if you aren’t comfortable. I think they were reminding each other to be patient and to not get greedy.”
On the Crowd
“I don’t know what I think about that, but I do know that there has never been a crowd of even 3-400 ever before so it was exciting to see that many people. We had like a 90-minute gap in between events so I think a lot of people went home to get food and a lot of people were getting off of work and said ?hey, lets swing over there and see that thing we read about in the paper. A lot of our kids had their folks here to cheer for them.”
Altitude Advantage
“I’ll be honest, the elevation is an advantage, and as I’ve been quoted before I don’t think it is as much of an advantage as our opponents think but they are all very good runners, they are all NCAA qualified and they are really, really top level runners. They are the top one percent of the country.”
General
“The men are on top with 33 points and our women had a good showing in the heptathlon because they are novices. James Begley finished ninth in the hammer throw, but he had the longest throw on his life trying to get there and that is all I can ask of him. I told him to do what he did to get here and to do his best, I never asked him to surpass what he’s done in the past but he did anyway. He had a really good day, and he just missed qualifying in a deep field. We’re ahead of where we though we’d be on the men’s side and we’re where we thought we’d be on the women’s side but tomorrow is a really busy day. Typically, today was a warm-up for a really big, complicated day tomorrow. Tomorrow is the hardest day of the Big 12 conference meet.”