Tristin Van Ord, Ryan Ford, and Dan Schaffer will all be competing in the Mt. SAC 5,000m this weekend in Walnut, CA. Tristin will be racing for the first time since her 2:27:07 4th place finish at the Houston Marathon in January, Dan will be bouncing back after his season opener Friday at the Duke Invitational, and Ryan will be looking for his 3rd straight track PR in as many races.
Tristin will be taking the spring off of marathon racing to focus on improving her speed a bit on the track. She has been working hard for the last month in Colorado, largely alongside Josh and Annmarie. Josh has been invaluable in helping Tristin with some of the quicker work as he makes his own transition, coming back into fitness following his bulging disc this winter.
Tristin comes into the race with a PR of 15:45, a mark she will have the goal of improving upon Friday night. Ryan and Dan will also have personal bests on their mind this weekend.
Dan opened up his outdoor season last weekend at Duke, running a 3:44 1500m to spin the wheels a week before his 5,000m opener. He comes into the race with a personal best of 13:36, but his 7:43 3,000m from this indoor season hints at the potential to bring that down quite a bit this spring.
Ryan will be looking for yet another track personal best. He ran 13:29 for 5,000m indoors at the BU Valentine Invitational in February and followed that up with a 28:16 10,000m performance at the beginning of March. He has put in a strong altitude block with the team and is looking forward to racing alongside Dan for the first time since the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day.
Tristin’s race will begin at approximately 9:45pm local time. Ryan and Dan are scheduled to race at approximately 10:20pm local time on Friday night, April 14th. All 3 will be in the 2nd section of their scheduled events. Live results will be posted here and the meet will be live streamed on Runnerspace.com (subscription required.)