Where We Were Right & Where We Were Wrong: Raleigh Relays Reactions (Day One)

An excellent Thursday night of distance races in Raleigh, North Carolina left us at The Stride Report with plenty to discuss and, as always, tons to analyze. With results from three major distance fields now finalized, I thought we would do something just a little bit different today.

I want to take a look at our day one meet preview and reevaluate how some of our (read: my) initial predictions and past analysis now look.

And yes, I am shamelessly ripping off Colin Cowherd.

It works for him and it's fun for me to write, so let's try this out.

We'll go in the order of the scheduled events, starting with the men's 1500 meters, moving to the men's 5000 meters and wrapping up with the women's 10,000 meters.

Here we go...

When you go back and review our predictions for the men's 1500 meters, you'll see that we listed five of the top-eight collegiate finishers. In a field of 200 finishers, that's pretty strong if I do say so myself!

Admittedly, it's a bit easy to say, "the fast guys will run fast", but we mentioned how Joe Petruno (Michigan State), Martin Prodanov (Missouri), Parker Wolfe (North Carolina), Nathan Green (Washington) and Jonathan Schwind (Lipscomb) could all be major factors in their respective races...and it made sense that they were!

All five of those guys had excellent indoor track seasons (minus Green who didn't compete attached) and were recently coming off of some of their best career performances in the last month or so. Momentum was very clearly in their favor.

And frankly, the other three men who didn't finish in the top-eight weren't that far off from that top group. Sellaro placed 10th, Ostberg placed 13th and Peterson placed 19th.

For the most part, the guys who have proven themselves on multiple occasions were able to deliver. The results may not have matched perfectly with our predictions, but I thought they were pretty solid.

Here's the thing: I was a huge Wes Porter fan during the altered 2020 cross country season. I thought he was a massive addition for the Virginia men who offered tremendous value for the Cavaliers on the grass.

He wound up having a very impressive outdoor track season last year, running 3:41 for 1500 meters en route to a silver medal at the ACC Outdoor Championships.

Porter was clearly a young name who was on the rise...but then he underwhelmed during the 2021 cross country season. A lot.

He was as DNF in his first two races of the season, then earned a pair of unexciting 55th place finishes at the ACC XC Championships and the Southeast Regional XC Championships.

Those underwhelming performances stuck with me as the insane depth of this past indoor track season overshadowed his promising personal best of 7:56 for 3000 meters and his fastest indoor mile time of 4:01.

Should Porter have been a bigger name on my radar? Yes, definitely. I knew he was talented, but in a field that held a lot of star-caliber names and sub-four milers, Porter became an afterthought.

And that, of course, was a mistake on my part.

That's because the second-year UVA talent just ran a jaw-dropping mark of 3:39 for 1500 meters, forcing us at The Stride Report to reevaluate Porter's potential as a national-caliber threat.

However, the more important fact might be that he defeated this entire field! Porter is racing beyond his years and he's ahead of schedule in terms of his personal bests. We will ultimately see numerous sub-3:40 marks later this season, but given his youth, Porter's result will likely stand out the most for the next two or three weeks.

In our meet preview, I said that if you were looking for a "deep sleeper", then Liberty's Ryan Drew would be a good option. I also said that he could run "3:41 or faster".

Welp, sure enough, Drew ended up running 3:41 for 1500 meters. On paper, that result makes me look brilliant (too generous?), but in reality, all of the signs were there for Drew to have the best race of his career.

Last spring, he ran 3:43 for 1500 meters. This past winter, he ran 4:04, 4:01 and 4:02, in that order. He was clearly due for a new personal best and his times indicated that he had solidly entrenched himself in that nationally competitive tier for the metric mile.

The same can be said for Wake Forest standout Aaron Las Heras who sometimes gets overlooked despite his resume. However, some people seem to forget that prior to this weekend, he had run 3:42 (1500), 7:55 (3k) and 13:42 (5k). His fitness was clearly strong enough to run 3:41 on Thursday night...and that's exactly what he did.

Now, admittedly, not all of my "sleeper" picks worked out and for those that did, some could argue that they weren't necessarily sleeper picks to begin with.

But work with me here, I thought I did pretty well!

In our meet preview, I said that the matchup between D2 stars such as Terrell Patterson (Southern Connecticut State) and Caleb Futter (Grand Valley State) and Mitch Cox (Queens (NC)) was going to be "an absolute thrill".

....and, uh, that was a lie.

Futter finished last in the heat, Patterson finished second-to-last in the same heat and Cox recorded a DNF result.

Now, admittedly, I was only able to watch the day one replays which solely featured the 5000 meters. There was no replay for the men's 1500 meters or the women's 10k (not that I'm aware of). It's possible that something happened to one (or all) of those three men that I'm simply not aware of.

Even so, that doesn't make me any less wrong.

Now, in defense of Patterson, his time of 3:49 isn't necessarily terrible, but given that he emerged as a 4:04 miler and one of the best in D2 this past winter, that result certainly could've been better.

Ok, hear me out. I am convinced that Luke Houser (Washington) was initially listed in the fastest heat rather than the second-fastest heat.

If he somehow wasn't, then that's my fault and I completely missed him. He would have been my initial answer for our "who deserved to be in the fastest heat" question, but I can't go back in time.

Even so, I still correctly picked the next-best option.

I said that UConn's Eric Van Der Els deserved to be in the fastest heat. He had an incredibly well-rounded resume, was at the peak of fitness based on his personal bests over the last few months and his 13:49 personal best would have made him competitive in the top 5k field.

Sure enough, Van Der Els ran 13:49 (again) in the second-fastest heat. He lost only to Houser (by one second). If you take both Houser and Van Der Els and put their 5k marks into the fastest heat, then they emerge as the sixth-fastest and seventh-fastest collegiate 5k runners on Thursday night.

They would have beaten over half of the collegiates in that top heat.

There aren't too many occasions where we are simultaneously right and wrong about a singular topic...and yet, Christian Noble somehow made that a possibility.

In our meet preview, Ben Weisel asked if Christian Noble would run over or under 13:37 for 5000 meters (his personal best). I said that Noble would run under his old PR and I thought he would do so relatively comfortably. I estimated a time of 13:31.

However, Noble blew away expectations in what might be the single best performance of his career. The Lee (Tenn.) veteran ran 13:24 for 5000 meters, hanging with a fast pace set by the Puma Elite men and eventually out-kicking 2021 10k national champion Patrick Dever for the win.

That 13:24 mark by Noble blew away our initial "over/under" estimate of 13:37. Heck, it also blew away my prediction of 13:31. In retrospect, that prompt seemed almost insulting to someone as talented as Noble.

Yet, at the same time, no other collegiate in this field ran under 13:40. So while we certainly didn't anticipate Noble running 13:24, our 13:37 reference point, relative to the rest of this field, wasn't entirely unfair, either.

I really liked the grit that we saw from Washington's Isaac Green. I have really become a big fan of his and I think he's beginning to reach the peak that I once hoped he would hit when he was coming out of high school.

The Husky veteran hung on to an honest pace early-on. He wasn't afraid to cover moves with the rest of the field and he occasionally bridged some gaps. At the end of the day, he finished as the second-best collegiate in a time of 13:40.

Was the time as fast as I was expecting? No, not really, but no collegiate in this field other than Noble really threw down an eye-catching time.

Green's success this past winter, running 4:00 (mile) and 7:49 (3k) really impressed me. I thought those marks paired well with 13:27 (5k) personal best from last spring.

This latest 5k result isn't anything crazy for Green, but it is a solid mark that should be used as momentum for the rest of the season. At the very least, Green can take pride in knowing that he took down a variety of talented NCAA distance runners on Thursday night.

Back in the early days of The Stride Report, one of the top distance talents in the nation was Kyle Mau. In terms of his resume, I have seen him grow and develop as an athlete for years now.

In certain seasons, he was one of the most dynamic distance talents in the country. He can handle a variety of race scenarios and his personal bests have often been amongst the best in the nation.

That's why, in our meet preview, I may have gotten a bit too excited for his return to the oval.

The elder Indiana star was amongst the collegiate chase pack for the early portion of this race, but based on what I saw, he began to fall off pretty hard around the 5:00 mark.

Coming into this race, it was admittedly hard to know what we should have expected from Mau. In retrospect, that uncertainty made my "Mau placing first amongst collegiates" a pretty large gamble.

He had a few respectable unattached results back in January, but for the most part, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding this Hoosier veteran coming into this race.

Mau ended up finishing second-to-last in his heat, ultimately running a time of 14:20. While that result is far from encouraging, I also can't help but shrug this one off. This was an uncharacteristically bad performance for Mau. We know that he is capable of doing so much more.

If he was just around the 14:00 minute barrier, then that would leave a bit more ambiguity in terms of what his actual fitness is like right now. But based on Thursday's results, I have a feeling that this was simply a bad race and that he will be better in the future.

"Ben Fleming is probably [the] best [miler] suited for a good 5k"

Given that he ran 13:57 en route to a big PR, I'm saying that this was a win.

"I think Fleming runs 13:49 on Thursday."

Yeah, that prediction was too aggressive, so I got that one wrong...

"I think sub-14 might be in play [for Guerra]..."

He ran 14:28, so....not quite.

"...but even I'll admit, that sounds a bit aggressive for someone who is so young and is predominately a miler."

See? I saved myself.

Coming into this race, I said that NC State's Dominique Clairmonte, Toledo's Stephanie Sherman and Washington's Allie Schadler were three women in this 10k field who I was completely unsure about.

And honestly, I don't think I could have answered that question any better than I did.
 

Not only did Schadler record a "Did Not Start" result, but both Clairmonte and Sherman also recorded "Did Not Finish" results of their own.

I literally could not have been more accurate. All three of these women decided to leave us guessing even after the races had concluded. Heck, I could have chosen any three women from this start lists, but I just happened to choose the three who didn't cross the finish line.

I hope they're all ok / healthy, but yeah, I probably won't be this spot on for a very long time.

Coming into this race, I said that Ritter was moving away from her ideal distance by contesting the 10k. When it came to Gockley, I said that she was moving towards her ideal racing distance.

With Gockley being more of a true long distance specialist, specifically in the 10k, and coming off of double All-American honors at the indoor national meet, I actually thought that this race favored Gockley a bit more than Ritter.

As a result, I said that Gockley would edge Ritter in this race.

That, however, was wrong.

Gockley still had an outstanding race, posting a time of 33:51 for the 10k distance. That was a very impressive personal best by 20 seconds and it now slots the Grand Valley State veteran at NCAA #23 All-Time in Division Two.

Ritter, however, was just better. She put some distance on Gockley and ended up defeating her fellow D2 counterpart with an excellent time of 33:42, placing her at NCAA #16 All-Time in Division Two.

I just gotta own it, I didn't think Ritter had that in her. The Lee veteran had only ever run one 10k race before this and it resulted in a time of 35:34, just under two minutes off from what she just ran.

Yes, Ritter's 15:58 personal best for 5000 meters likely indicated that she had more in her, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Ritter moved up in distance and handled her first true 10k challenge very well.

And while we're here, Gockley ran super well too! That shouldn't be lost in this conversation. I don't know if I would say that she's in the national title conversation, but I think she's very much in the top-three conversation a few months from now.

If you look back at our meet preview, you'll realize that picking a winner for this race wasn't as easy as it may seem. There were so many highly accomplished women in this 10k field, each with national-caliber accolades and arguments to be considered as favorites for gold in this race.

However, between inexperience in the 10k, semi-questionable tactical tendencies, lack of recent results and slower personal bests, the athlete in this field who seemed to have the least downside was Fegans -- so that's who I chose to win.

And sure enough, she took home gold! The Georgia Tech ace won with a time of 33:00.

This was a super encouraging victory for Fegans who took down a really talented field. She has been an upper-echelon distance talent for a while now, but based on last spring and what we saw on Thursday night, it seems clear that the 10k is her marquee event.

In theory, Fegans should be able to handle a variety of race scenarios in the 10k. She has excellent 4:36 mile speed which she can utilize in tactical settings, but she also has elite aerobic strength via her 12th place finish at the NCAA Winter XC Championships last year.

Personal bests of 15:36 (5k) and 32:45 (10k) don't hurt, either.

While she may not have set a new PR in the 10,000 meters on Thursday, one could look at Fegans indoor track season this past winter and believe that she's currently in the best shape of her life.

Don't sleep on the 2021 ACC 10k champion. This could be the spark for Fegans that avalanches into season-long dominance.

My "deep sleeper" picks in this race included Florida State's Elizabeth Funderburk, Butler's Emily Royston and Furman's Emily Little. For the most part, they were fairly underwhelming.

In defense of Royston, her personal best coming into this 10k was 35:54. She ultimately ran a new personal best of 35:39. And who can be upset at a personal best?

I do, however, think that her past results indicate that she is capable of running faster. I thought this would be a good field for her to really reach a new level, but it's hard to be critical of a PR.

As for Funderburk, she has a 10k personal best of 33:31. In theory, that mark should have made her one of the better women in this entire race. However, she has only raced twice on the track since the fall of 2020 and neither of those two races sparked much inspiration.

That's something that I probably could have taken a closer look at before she ran 35:37 on Thursday night.

We then wrap up with Furman's Emily Little. She recorded a DNF result, so I'm not going to try to sit here and analyze that. Not sure what happened here, but the 10k is a different beast, especially for younger runners.

There have been subtle signs for the past few seasons that NC State's Gionna Quarzo was slowly and quietly developing into a nationally competitive longer distance runner.

Despite not running a PR, Thursday night felt like validation for the up-and-coming Wolfpack runner.

Let's review her young collegiate career so far...

She finished 42nd place at the 2020 ACC XC Championships.

She later ventured into the 2021 indoor track season where she finished two spots out from a scoring spot at the ACC Indoor Championships.

Her 2021 outdoor track season saw her run 16:17 for 5000 meters, run a massive 10k time of 33:24 and finish one spot out from qualifying for the national meet.

Fast forward to this past winter, and she ran 16:15 to place 4th at the ACC Indoor Championships.

Despite initially joining this NC State program in 2020 as arguably the "least" accomplished distance recruit -- which feels uncomfortable to say given how good she was as a prep runner -- Quarzo has evolved into one of the most promising and reliable youngsters on this powerhouse roster.

That showed on Thursday night as Quarzo moved up to her ideal distance and ran a time of 33:32, just eight seconds off of her personal best en route to a 6th place finish. I had her placing 5th.

It's rare that women as young as Quarzo find as much success as she has in the 10k, but she's going to be a major weapon for NC State in the future. Quarzo is stacking her fitness each and every season and she is clearly trending in the right direction.

I'll be eager to see what she does in future seasons.

I feel embarrassed.

As someone who grew up outside of the Philadelphia area, I should have known more about La Salle's Eleanor Mancini.

Even worse, as someone who went to Virginia Tech, which is just 20 minutes from Radford University, I should have known more about Hannah Moran.

But I didn't.

These two women were excellent in Raleigh on Thursday night. The mid-major stars put together outstanding marks, with Mancini running a time of 33:20 for 4th place while Moran ran a time of 33:39 for 9th place.

Mancini is a much better talent than some people realize. She ran 15:58 for 5000 meters on the indoor oval last month. The La Salle ace has been an underrated name for the last few seasons now and it looks like she was still underrated in this field.

Now for Moran.

Hannah Moran's name might sound familiar. That's because she previously attended the University of Virginia. While she was with the Cavaliers, she held a personal best of 33:38 for the 10,000 meter distance.

Her time on Thursday night? 33:39.

When you put the pieces of the puzzle together, it makes sense why Moran was able to thrive in this field. She has faced top-tier competition before and she had a personal best which suggested that she could run this fast.

Hand up from me, I probably should have mentioned these two women in the preview.