BOULDER— The University of Colorado track and field team will host the Potts Indoor Invitational this Friday and Saturday, January 22 and 23, at Balch Fieldhouse.

The Buffaloes will host several Front Range schools as Air Force, Colorado State, Colorado School of Mines, Northern Colorado, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs and Wyoming will all send athletes to compete.

The Balch Fieldhouse houses a tight track and bleachers which allow for upfront views of the action.

The pentathlon will start with the 60-meter hurdles at 9 a.m. and the men will start at 9:05 with the 60-meter dash. The other events in the pentathlon that will be contested are the high jump, shot put, long jump and 800-meter run. The events in the heptathlon on the first day are the long jump, shot put and high jump. The other three events (60-meter hurdles, pole vault and 1,000-meter run) will take place on Saturday.

The women’s and men’s pole vault will also take place on Friday, starting at 10 a.m. The rest of the events are scheduled for Saturday. The complete schedule is listed below.

The Buffs will have a good showing at the meet as 36 men and 34 women are registered for events in all areas. For more information, go to www.CUBuffs.com.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010

9 a.m.                     Women’s Pentathlon 60m Hurdles

9:05 a.m.               Men’s Heptathlon 60 Meters

9:35 a.m.               Women’s Pentathlon High Jump

9:40 a.m.               Men’s Heptathlon Long Jump

******                    Men’s Heptathlon Shot Put

******                    Women’s Pentathlon Shot Put

******                    Men’s Heptathlon High Jump

******                    Women’s Pentathlon Long Jump

******                    Women’s Pentathlon 800 meters

10 a.m.                   Women’s Pole Vault

Following Women’s PV     Men’s Pole Vault

(The Combined Event Competition will follow a rolling time schedule after the second event)

SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 2010

FIELD EVENTS

10 a.m.                   Men’s Weight Throw

10 a.m.                   Women’s Shot Put

1:35 p.m.               Men’s Heptathlon Pole Vault

2 p.m.                     Men’s Long Jump

3 p.m.                     Men’s High Jump

Following Men’s WT          Women’s Weight Throw

Following Women’s SP      Men’s Shot Put

Following Men’s LJ            Women’s Long Jump

Following Women’s LJ     Men’s Triple Jump

Following Men’s TJ            Women’s Triple Jump

Following Men’s HJ            Women’s High Jump

RUNNING EVENTS

1 p.m.                     Men’s Heptathlon 60mh

1:45 p.m.               Men’s 60m Dash Prelim

1:50 p.m.               Women’s 60m Dash Prelim

2 p.m.                     Men’s 60m Hurdles

2:10 p.m.               Women’s 60m Hurdles

2:15 p.m.               Men’s 60m Dash Final

2:20 p.m.               Women’s 60m Dash Final

2:25 p.m.               Men’s Mile

2:35 p.m.               Women’s Mile

2:50 p.m.               Men’s 400 Meters

3 p.m.                     Women’s 400 Meters

3:10 p.m.               Men’s 600yds

3:20 p.m.               Women’s 600yds

3:30 p.m.               Men’s 800 Meters

3:40 p.m.               Women’s 800 Meters

3:50 p.m.               Men’s 200 Meters

4 p.m.                     Women’s 200 Meters

4:10 p.m.               Men’s 3000 Meters

4:25 p.m.               Women’s 3000 Meters

4:40 p.m.               Men’s Heptathlon 1,000 Meters

4:50 p.m.               Men’s 4 x 400 Meter Relay

5 p.m.                     Women’s 4 x 400 Meter Relay

There will not be a rolling schedule in the running events.

On Wednesday Jan 20th, Jenny Barringer wrote about her considerations in deciding which sponsor to choose in her post-collegiate career. She planned on breaking the news on her blog at Flotrack on Friday Jan 22.

I’m finding though that there is a lot more involved than just that. It’s not dissimilar from making a decision about college. Who you work with, what message they carry, what their product is like, where they’re located- all of these things can have a subtle but eventually substantial influence on how you make up your mind. I remember back to college recruiting and how aspects of Colorado, that I never anticipated, were eventually the elements that drew me, as a person, to want to live here. Now, the process moves on from considerations of education to an entire career path.

Well news broke early from the Denver Post on Thursday afternoon that the CU Boulder runner that she will be running for New Balance.

The New Balance site is teasing it will be announcing some “very big news” on Friday.

Announcing...

Also sponsored by New Balance is Boulder Elite 2008 US Half Marathon Champ James Carney, coached by Brad Hudson, who makes his home in Lafayette, CO. Who apparently has listed the Marshall Mesa as one of his favorite training venues.

We look forward to watching Barringer continue to build on her already illustrious career.

CU Cross Country

BOULDER— The University of Colorado women’s and men’s cross country teams are each ranked No. 6 in the final USTFCCCA Coaches Top 30 after placing first and second, respectively, at the NCAA Mountain Region Championship on Saturday.

Colorado will race at the 2009 NCAA Championship on Monday, November 23, in Terre Haute, Ind. The men are slated to run first at 10:08 a.m. and the women will race at 10:58 a.m.

Set your DVR

NCAA Cross Country Championships

Barringer will be eying the individual championship as she has been the runner-up the last two times she has raced at the meet (2006, 2007). Both championship races will be broadcast live on Versus Network (Comcast Channel 73) and streamed online via NCAA.com.

The Buffalo men collected 296 points in the poll for their No. 6 ranking. They dropped from fifth to sixth while BYU moved up from 14th to fifth with 306 points. BYU defeated the Buffs by a single point at regionals. CU had all five scorers place in the top 24 to earn all-region honors, but BYU had its top five finish in the top 16 to win the title. Stanford remained the top team in the poll and has had the ranking for the last six polls. The Cardinal earned 11 first-place votes to take the top honor with 359 points, while Oklahoma State is No. 2 with 349 points.

The CU women picked up 299 points in the poll for their sixth-place ranking. Colorado won the women’s regional championship for the first time since 2006. Jenny Barringer became the first CU female to win the regional title since 2004. Washington has been ranked on top of the poll for all eight polls. The Huskies took 10 of 12 first-place votes on the women’s side with 358 points. Villanova, the second-place team, recorded the other two votes and took 350 points.

Courtesy of CUBuffs.com

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

The University of Colorado men’s and women’s cross country teams punched their tickets to the 2009 NCAA Championships on Saturday afternoon at the University of New Mexico Golf Course.

The No. 6 ranked women’s team won the regional for the first time since 2006 and the No. 5 ranked men’s team took second; ending a streak of six straight regional titles. Senior Jenny Barringer also won the women’s race and was the first CU woman to win the individual title since 2004 when Renee Metivier took home the crown. (The top two teams automatically qualify for nationals while the top four individuals not associated with either of those teams also qualify.)  The NCAA Championship is Monday, November 23, in Terre Haute, Ind.

“It was really exciting,” Barringer said. “I ran at this course in 2006 as a sophomore and I remember having a great team and coming in and taking second to Sally (Kipyego) and I feel like that was so long ago. So, coming back here and being in a different position with an equally amazing team and this time pulling in the win was really fun.”

Barringer ran a different race this time. Instead of jumping out to a lead and leaving the pack in the dust, she ran with the top pack for the first 4k. Freshman Allie McLaughlin was in the lead pack with Barringer and the two ran side by side along with the top three harriers for Tech. McLaughlin was even able to lead the race for part of the way.

“I wanted to run with Allie for the majority of the race and then start to pull away with about 2k left,” Barringer explained.

When Barringer finally did pull away from the pack with 2k remaining, she won the race easily and had 12 seconds on the runner-up Cecily Lemmon from BYU. Barringer broke the tape in 20 minutes, 29.0 seconds and Lemmon finished in 20:41.1.

Read the rest of the article and watch post race interviews with Jenny Barringe, Jordan Kyle, Richard Medina and Allie McLaughlin

http://www.cubuffs.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=600&atclid=204833522

Photo Courtesy: Chip Bromfield, ProMotion Ltd.

University of Colorado senior Jenny Barringer won the individual crown at the 2009 Big 12 Cross Country Championship on Saturday morning, while the CU men’s and women’s teams each took second place.

Barringer took off from the gun, running up the first of many hills, and never looked back as she captured her first conference cross country title.

“This took me five years. It took me three years of college to get to the Olympics (3,000-meter steeplechase), and five years of cross country to get to the Big 12 Championship. It means a lot and it means a lot that I came back with a really strong team. This is absolutely the most fun race I’ve had in college so far. It was a really fun day.” - Jenny Barringer

“She was cruising and had a huge smile on her face, It was an easy run for her and she was having fun the whole way.” – Colorado Head Coach Mark Wetmore

On the men’s side, the top four finishers were Cowboys as OSU got all five of its scorers across the finish in the top 14. Colorado had all five scorers finish in the top 15.

The first Buffalo to cross the line was senior Kenyon Neuman. He was seventh with a time of 25:10.33 on the 8k course. Christian Thompson, who led the Buffs at pre-nats, earned his first top-10 finish by placing ninth (25:18.83). He was 29th in 2008.

Read more at CUBuffs.com

Post Race Interview http://www.cubuffs.com/mediaPortal/player.dbml?catid=1802&id=657018

An Honorable Run

When Matt McCue was a freshman walk-on to the University of Colorado cross country team in the summer of 2001, he showed up for his first run at the Potts Field track. The were only three runners at Potts that day; future NCAA champions and Olympians Jorge Torres and Dathan Ritzenhein, as well as Edwardo Torres. McCue got hammered that July morning, but he hung tough with the “skinny Trinity” the entire 12-mile run.

McCue hung in well enough to run for four years for Mark Wetmore’s Buffs, a career bookmarked by Colorado national team championships his freshman and senior years. As I read the early part of McCue’s new book about his Colorado and high school days, An Honorable Run, I thought it would be similar to the popular CU-inspired Running with the Buffaloes, by Chris Lear, likely full of cool anecdotes about the Torres twins, “Ritz,” and the workouts the team did.

In a pleasant surprise, it is not. Rather, “An Honorable Run” is a poignant runner’s coming-of-age story that explores the relationship between McCue and his high school coach, the late Bob Brown, as well as with Wetmore, a perennial Big 12 coach-of-the-year. The coaches are contrasts in personalities and life journeys, but both made deep impressions on McCue, which he eloquently explores in this 150-page book.

Brown and Wetmore both “were driven by a simple passion: they loved coaching runners,” McCue writes. “Every year, they would bid goodbye to seniors and welcome incoming freshman … I was the other factor, common to both. The eager runner, I barreled down the fast lane, connecting – and colliding – with each coach along the way.”

“The more I ran, the more I found myself falling in love with the sport. … it gave me goals to meet and an identity. I was known as the kid who ran fast. When I was tired I couldn’t ask my coach to take me out of the race for a rest. Instead, I was left to find out if I had any grit or guts. I lived for that feeling.”

McCue is indeed eager. As a freshman at Regina High School in Iowa, he wanted to win a state championship, immediately. The wise and hug-giving Brown puts him on a four-year plan. In the first of six chapters, “Pace yourself,” McCue describes his start in running as a 13 year-old. He wants to win, but realizes he is not the most talented runner: “There was only one solution: hard work.”

Ah, the secret formula for any distance runner (or writer). McCue writes that in high school he grew “accustomed to driving myself to exhaustion. Running far hurt!” Yet, under Brown’s patient coaching, McCue discovers that “The more I ran, the more I found myself falling in love with the sport. … it gave me goals to meet and an identity. I was known as the kid who ran fast. When I was tired I couldn’t ask my coach to take me out of the race for a rest. Instead, I was left to find out if I had any grit or guts. I lived for that feeling.”

McCue was fast as a prep, but not fast enough for a college scholarship. Like many high schoolers, he ran too much and got injured. After reading Lear’s “Running with the Buffaloes” – several times – McCue’s new goal became “walking-on” to CU’s team. Wetmore takes one or two such non-scholarship runners each year, and McCue made it in 2001. Locals will enjoy his description of the Buffalo Ranch cross country course and of racing up Jawbone Hill.

The following chapters detail McCue’s CU career, showing how he got stronger and faster. Not able to make the traveling squad for the NCAA cross country meet his senior year, McCue’s new goal becomes running a fast time his final semester. He seems to do just that at the April, 2005 Mt. SAC Relays 10,000 meters. “An Honorable Run” opens with a prologue describing that race and how, running under the lights in a cool California night and cheered on by his parents, McCue clocks a personal best 10K of 29:33. Or does he? The final chapter of the book provides a surprising twist to that story.

“An Honorable Run” is about more than running fast times. It delves into the question many ask as time goes on: What does it mean to be a success? McCue begins finding his answer one Sunday afternoon when his mother calls him at “The Fight Club,” the house up Boulder Canyon he shares with the Torres twins and Ritzenehin. Coach Brown had inoperable pancreatic cancer, McCue’s mother tells him.

“Suddenly, life had acquired a whole new meaning that would force my perspective to evolve and mature,” McCue writes.

Now, confronted with life’s suffering, McCue postpones a trip to New York City, where his dream of becoming a writer will take him, to return to Iowa and spend time with Brown. “What was important was a coach in Iowa who had always cared for me even when I ran away from him. It was my turn to wrap my arms around him. I headed home to stand by his side.”

McCue is able to spend much time with his former coach, whose strong will allows him to survive longer than expected. In November, 2007, McCue finished writing “An Honorable Run.” Later that week, Brown passed away. McCue returns home for the funeral. It is a windy, gray day. McCue holds it together until some former Regina runners ask him about the book.

“Coach told us,” they say. “He was very proud of it, and of you.”

Writes McCue, in the final lines of the book: “I completely broke down. The words twisted my insides, ripped my throat, and filled my eyes with tears – of sadness for that day, and of joy for the future, when life would begin anew and I could carry on, with hopes of becoming a ‘Coach Brown’ in the life of a passionate young man, someday.”

In the summer after his sophomore year, McCue had received a note from Wetmore, saying in part: “Remember that you train and live as seriously and as committed as anyone, and when it is time to move on, you’ll know you had as honorable a run as anyone. Thanks for your great character.”

McCue has written an honorable book, one that does justice not only to his two coaches and his close-knit family, but to all the thousands of young runners who dream big dreams, and who struggle endlessly to reach them. Like a 30-minute 10K runner with the potential to race faster, An Honorable Run”left me with the feeling that McCue has much more to write.

BOULDER — The weather is turning colder but the University of Colorado men’s and women’s cross country teams are looking to heat up their seasons at the NCAA Pre-National Invitational on Saturday, October 17, in Terre Haute, Ind.

The invite is the first big meet of the season for Colorado. The Buffs have competed in three meets this year, including two home meets. Competition at this contest will be tough as there are 18 ranked men’s teams and 19 ranked women’s teams in the mix. The Buffaloes are two of those ranked teams. The men are tied for fourth and the women are ranked No. 19 in the most recent USTFCCCA Coaches Top 30 Poll.

The men will start off the meet for CU by running in the 8-kilometer “white” race at 9:40 a.m. against No. 1 ranked Stanford, No. 6 BYU and No. 8 Portland. There are three other top-30 teams in the race. The women have been assigned to run in the 6k “blue” race that starts at 10:20 a.m. They will also run against six top-30 teams which include No. 4 Oregon, No. 6 Stanford and No. 7 Iowa State.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the women are lead by senior Jenny Barringer. Barringer has been the top racer for the Buffs since her sophomore season (2006) and was the NCAA runner-up in 2006 and 2007 before redshirting the 2008 season. Fellow senior Emily Hanenburg and junior Laura Thweatt, the reigning Big 12 Runner of the Week, will also take some of the leadership responsibility for the Buffs.

Kenyon Neuman won the men’s title at the Rocky Mountain Shootout and looks to have a great senior campaign for the Buffs. Neuman, along with senior Jordan Kyle will likely give CU a great 1-2 punch. Juniors Matt Tebo and Richard Medina have been scoring for the Buffs since their freshman year and will once again add a great deal of depth to the Buffalo line-up.

In total, the Buffs are allowed to put seven racers on the start line of the team races and will have some harriers competing in the open sections.

Indiana State hosts the meet for the sixth straight year and the seventh time in eight years. The invitational will take place at the LaVern Gibson Cross Country Course and is a chance for teams to preview the NCAA Championship course, although the men will run a 10k course at nationals versus an 8k course on Saturday. There are four team races, two men’s and two women’s (blue and while) as well as an open race for each gender. Results will be posted upon the conclusion of each race at www.gosycamores.com.