Another race, another record broken.
The Wildcats continued to live up to their “Run Wild” mentality this weekend, setting personal and team records at the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational and the Bradley Classic. In the two meets, the Cats finished 27th and seventh.
Senior Audrey Huth steamrolled her own NU 6K record with a time of 20 minutes and 19 seconds, 16 seconds faster than her previous best time. The star senior said she is healthy this late in the season for the first time in a while and has her eyes set on beating her own record again.
“Breaking the record was awesome,” Huth said. “It was really exciting. But I definitely feel like I could do better. It was great that I broke it, but at the same time, it definitely wasn’t the highlight of my day by any chance. I was expecting more of myself and hoping for much better.”
It was not all easy for NU. Junior Libby Kocha lost a shoe during the meet at Wisconsin and had to finish running the race barefoot. The course was so crowded that a few NU runners found themselves moving through the weeds. Juniors Michelle Moriset and Lexie Goldsmith both posted personal records for the second straight week but found it difficult to stick together and, at times, lost each other in the crowd.
“We weren’t working together like the way we had been in practice,” Moriset said. “This meet was challenging because it had so many girls. We were running in the bushes, tripping and falling down. It’s a challenge to not get cut off and fall behind. But things like that just happen.”
Even though the Cats finished fourth among Big Ten teams in a meet that featured 20 ranked teams, Goldsmith said NU could have done better.
“As a team we ran all right,” Goldsmith said. “But it’s kind of exciting to see how well we did with just running all right.”
The Cats have a week off before heading to East Lansing, Mich., for one of their biggest meets of the year: the Big Ten Championships. The majority of the Cats’ top runners are healthy coming into the final stretch of the season, which could prove vital for the squad in making some noise in the conference. Coach April Likhite must select only nine runners to compete.
“We really don’t know what could happen in the next two weeks,” Huth said. “Everyone just needs to keep running and training. You never know what can happen.”
