Cross Country Runs

Although runners from the Harvard men's and women's cross-country teams both posted individual first place finishes on Friday in New Haven, the teams suffered disappointing losses overall, the men in a dual meet with Yale and the women at the H-Y-P meet.

Junior captain Ed Baker and senior Dave Martin placed first and second, but the Crimson finished behind Yale, 25-35 (in cross-country, low score wins), to a highly talented Yale team, which took third through eighth places in the race.

For the women's team, senior Bethany Helms took first place and sophomore Leann Hymas took sixth, but, like the men, the rest of the Harvard women's team failed to place in the top 10, scoring 54 points total and losing to Yale, with 24 points, and Princeton, with 47.

Harvard Men

For the men's team, usually strong runners Baker (1st- 26:48.7) and Martin (2nd-26:49.4) led the way. Martin was recovering from being sick last week, and so he and Baker decided to run the race with a strategy that was different from their normal approach.

"Instead of taking the race out at a barn-burning pace like we usually do, Edward and I let the Yalies set the pace early on," Martin said. "Three miles into the race, feeling relaxed, we made a strong move and laid the proverbial smack down on the Bulldogs."

Baker took a lead over Martin with about three-quarters of a mile to go and ended up beating Martin just barely at the end.

"Time-wise it was my slowest race of the season, but strategy-wise it was my best race of the season," said Baker.

Although Baker and Martin ran typically well, the rest of the men's team had trouble with the race course, which runs through a golf course of hilly terrain. This course, which is Yale's home course, proved to be a considerable advantage for Yale. Some of the Harvard team also felt the course was longer than the typical five miles.

"The course was more challenging than any other I have run on this season," said Baker. "I think that the course was over five miles, and the terrain was quite hilly."

Moreover, the Crimson raced just last weekend in New York, at the Iona Meet of Champions, and had been training hard all last week, so the team was not as rested as it could have been.

"We had a race and a couple of hard workouts in the six days preceding the Harvard-Yale meet," said Baker, "so we were not exactly well rested for this race."

Unlike Harvard, the Yale team had only a few seconds between its No. 1 and No. 5 finishers. In the coming week, Harvard will look to narrow the gap between its runners.

"I have all the respect in the world for the Yalies as people, they are certainly good friends of ours," said Martin. "However, they stole one from us yesterday and we only have ourselves to blame."

"Right now we have a larger gap [than Yale does between its runners], but we are working on decreasing that gap, and I believe that it will just be a matter of time," Baker added. "At least five other guys have been training up with Dave and me, so I am confident that they will be able to race closer to us towards the end of the season when it will matter the most."

The team is looking forward to its most important race of the season on Friday, the New England Championships. The team has high hopes for its prospects there.

"I'm very excited about New Englands and our other upcoming meets because there will be so many teams there," said Baker. "At these meets, it is even more important that we focus on running together in packs and narrowing the time gap between our No. 1 and No. 5 guy. I feel confident that we can do this."

Harvard should have an advantage in Friday's race because it is on Harvard's home course, Franklin Park.

"It will be a slobberknocker to boot," said Martin, "to quote Jim Ross, but we're tough like that."

Harvard Women

Helms (1st- 18:33) lead the way for the women with a strong performance. After taking last cross-country season off, Helms has run well for the Crimson this season, and placed 19th overall out of 150 runners last week at the Meet of Champions.

Hymas also ran well in New Haven, finishing in sixth place overall.

"I felt good after the race on Friday, mostly because it feels like we are meshing very well as a team," Hymas said. "We communicate well, and help each other to be better runners. I was a little surprised that we were third out of three teams, but we also did the best we could have done. Personally, I was rather giddy after my race. I had a fun time running on the golf course, even though it was pretty hilly. It was like running on cushy carpet."

Typically strong runners like junior Mary Unsworth, senior captain Kate Moynihan, and sophomore Erin Leonard, all finished behind 10th place. Unsworth is recovering from the flu and, despite leading for the first mile, dropped back in the pack after having trouble breathing. The recent hard training and hilly terrain proved to be trouble for the others on the team as well.

The team is looking forward to meeting the best runners in the region on Friday as they run in the IC4A Championships, also at Franklin Park.