Monday, January 12, 2009

Kicking off the Rust

Welcome to the new University of Minnesota Men's Track and Field Blog!



The 2009 season got underway on Saturday at the fieldhouse with the Northwest open. The guys have been back at it for a week now, with their normal early return for 'break' training. So most opened their season in a limited fashion, if they even opened at all.

The first week back for training went well... the main focus in all event groups was to burn off some of the excess pie consumption that took place over the holiday. Life is pretty good for a Gopher track athlete training over break... team meals, per-diem, naps, and no homework.

Some major highlights from the meet included Ben Peterson opening his season in the vault in a major way. His 5.30m jump (17-4.50) was good enough for the win and a NCAA provisional performance. Ben went on to take a very good attempt at 17-8 just brushing it off. The video of his 17-4 jump is below. According to the NCAA ranking - his mark is one of only 3 NCAA provo-marks so far this year, and ranks as the second highest jump in the nation at this early stage of the season.

Matt Fisher (competing unattached) opened up strong with a 2.14m jump (7-0.25). Logan Stroman snagged a win in the 400m for a solid opener and the multi-event and hurdles crew had strong openers with many PR's in the prelims and finals of the 60m hurdles.

In the mid-distance and distance events, the 800m crew of Andy Richardson, Ben Blankenship and Travis Burkstrand pounded out a good opener with Richardson taking it down with a solid 1:53.65. Nick Hutton gets the honorable mention, looking very strong through 750 meters before catching a foot on the rail.

Joe Macfarland and Rick Furseth each took down their respective mile and 3k races.

Its good to be able to point to some solid openers this early in the season... we'll keep it rolling with the Minnesota Open this Saturday again at the Fieldhouse.


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