This weekday meet is more of a practice. We wear uniforms, and other teams attend, but we are working on pace and packing together with teammates, and reminding ourselves of what racing is about – and how best to prepare for it (timing, food, stretch, warmup, strides). Are there ways you can help a teammate today? This is the only time all season we are racing mid-week in the late afternoon. This is usually a hot afternoon. Everyone runs.
Sat
Sept. 16
UC Riverside Invite
UCR Ag fields
7:30am
This meet is flat and very fast through the orange groves. We focus on getting out well in a large field, and finding our race rhythm based on how our body feels (not using a split clock). Veterans have done this course before, but be mindful about how much you use this as a reference point of comparison to previous years. What should you do the day before the race? Dinner? Sleep? Be prepared to see a large field on the start line. Be prepared to hear a fast 1-mile split. This is the first race with lots of others, which is exciting. Try to find your teammates, and run with them! Everyone runs.
Sat
Sept. 23
The Master’s Univ. XC Invite
Santa Clarita, CA
7:30am
This meet features many D3 and D2 teams, and is run on a fast course on the CSUSM campus. With a decent-sized field, this gives us a chance to see a lot of teams we don’t normally see, and we practice pushing the pace and making moves in the middle of the race because we are entering the middle of the season. We still want to find and run with teammates. This is a loop course. This is our first 6k distance. Everyone runs.
Sat
Oct 7
Pomona-Pitzer XC Invite
Home
7:45am
Sat
Oct 7
Pre-Nationals (travel trip)
PA
11:00am
This is our home invite on our home course. Everyone runs in the Wash! Fun and exciting! And it’s ok to be a bit nervous as we showcase our home course. We are familiar with running it, but we need to keep working on things to improve how we raced earlier. This is a loop course. We see D2 and NAIA schools, plus about half of our conference shows up. Everyone runs. The Pre-Nationals races allows us to 1) race against other D3 schools to establish a case for being selected to Nationals and 2) practice traveling and racing. We will take 7 athletes on this trip, leaving Friday, racing Saturday morning, and returning Saturday evening.
Sat
Oct 15
UC Riverside Highlander Challenge
UCR Ag fields
7:30am
We MAY run this meet, and we MAY NOT. Stay tuned. If we compete, we will race at UCR again but on a 6k course (not 5k like September). This is the second week of racing in a row – good practice for our back-to-back Reg/Nats weekends later in the season. What are our team goals at these races? Everyone runs in one of the races.
Sat
Oct 28
SCIAC Championships
Riverside City Course
8:30am
The 9-team conference championship, run on a new course on dirt (a bit dusty). While we are working to have a strong showing, we race knowing that we still have Regionals and Nationals to come. Everyone runs, but this is the final race for those who are not continuing on to Regionals / Nationals. This race is a celebration of our full team coming together for the final time of 2022. Everyone is valued as a team member no matter where you’ve been running on the team.
Sat
Nov 11
NCAA III West Regionals
Riverside City Course
9:00am
Top seven race. We can travel with seven or eight runners. We will leave Friday and return late Saturday night. This race is the qualifier for the NCAA Division III National Championships a week later. The top team automatically qualifies to Nationals, while other teams (2nd, 3rd, 4th) must wait until Sunday to see if they are chosen as a National qualifying team based on D3 XC criteria.
Sat
Nov 18
NCAA III National Championships
Carlisle, PA
11:00am
Nationals! Our top seven race. We can travel with eight runners. We will leave on Thursday for the meet, and return either Saturday night or Sunday, depending on what we can find for travel arrangements. On Friday we preview the course, and on Saturday we race in a very exciting environment! The D3 National meet has never been held here.
