QUEEN’S CROSS COUNTRY INVITATIONAL RACE, OCTOBER 13, 2007 SUMMARY

It was a dominating performance for the women’s team as a yellow tide rolled in.  Leading the domination was Leslie Sexton who crushed in the women's race with an outstanding 18:18.2 run almost 30-seconds ahead of the next finisher (hard to believe her previous best on the course was a 19:51).  Most of the team vets posted their best times ever on the course - hard to believe given the weather – cold and very windy; the usual Fort Henry Hill stuff!  Liz Miller ran 63-seconds faster, Natalie Desimini ran 62-seconds faster, Julie McVicar was 30-seconds faster and Charlotte Aust ran 10-seconds faster on the course than ever before.  Rookie sensation Nadia Tatlow was 5^th in 19:02.9.  The first golden wave was lead by Liz Miller in 11^th in 19:22.5 closely followed by Chelsey Wyrostok 12^th in 19:22.8 and rookie Leah Larocque 13^th in 19:25.2.  The second wave was lead by Natalie Desimini in 17^th with a 19:46.0 clocking, followed by Liza Howard (another development squad success story) in 19^th with 19:54.5 and rookie Grace Keenleyside in 20^th with 19:55.0.  With 8 women under 20-minutes on this tough demanding course and horrible weather conditions, things are looking very positive for OUA's 2 weeks from now.  Kudos to the development squad gals as 16 of them ran and finished.  With 16 women total running faster than 21:06.2 the depth of this years squad is beyond compare.

With the better portion of the championship team opting not to run, and depth lacking this year, the guys were in tough to come up with a big showing on their home course.  Chris Brens and Jeff Barr both ran about a 1.5 minutes better than they have previously done on the course.  Trevor Walmsley posted a 3.5-minute improvement; Brett Meinzinger almost a 5-minute improvement; Matt MacDougall a 4-minute improvement; Austin Zygmunt a 2-minute improvement; and David Clinkard despite being injured most of the season posted a 15-sec improvement.  If everyone is healthy things should be interesting at OUA’s in two weeks time.