The New England Championships races kicked off the season for many Bulldogs on Saturday.
In the races, held at Boston’s Franklin Park, the men placed 17th out of 46 teams on the 4.95-mile course, while the women placed 16th out of 39 teams on the 5k course.
“This was a lot of people’s first race after coming back from injury or just first race even, but it was a good starting point,” Lindsey Raymond ’12 said.
Raymond was the top female Bulldog, placing 38th out of 269 runners with a time of 18:42. (Raymond is a former City editor for the News.)
Other top-placing female runners included Sarah Barry ’14, who placed 70th, Anne Lovelace ’12, who placed 87th, Madeline Adams ’12, who placed 138th and Samantha Fry ’15, who placed 145th.
The men’s top two finishers were Ryan Laemel ’14, who placed 16th out of 250 and Julian Sheinbaum ’12, who placed 28th. They were followed by Matthew Nussbaum ’15 and Alec Borsook ’15, who finished 122nd and 127th, respectively. Nussbaum said while the team was not running its top men at the race, it was not “completely satisfied” with the outcome.
In a pre-meet interview, Laemel mentioned some of his concerns about the race.
“It’s about how much you can suffer, how much you can deal with the pain, how much you can push through,” Laemel said. “It’s an 8k race; it’s really going to start hurting around the 5k, but you still have two miles to push.”
Raymond echoed this mentality of cross-country competition after the race.
“During the race I was in pain, but there were other things I was thinking about, such as race strategies, and making sure I didn’t get caught in the middle.”
Raymond added that one of the things the team could work on next weekend is pack mentality, as team members were fairly far apart during the race.
Isa Qasim ’15, who raced for the men’s team, said “pack mentality” is the concept that runners perform better when running with a teammate, as they can encourage each other when pain ensues.
Compared to the muddy conditions at last week’s Paul Short Invitational, the course conditions of the New England Championships were much better. There was one hill and a few muddy patches, but for the most part, Fry said, the course was dry.
Both teams are looking forward to better performances later in the season. Laemel said the ultimate goal is to win the Ivy League Championships, which will be held at Princeton. For this reason, Laemel added that next week’s Princeton meet will be more highly prioritized than the New England Championships because it will give the runners a chance to scout out the race course of the Ivy League Championship.