Contributor: The Nerd
A big start
The official meet season kicked off last Thursday, with nearly all of the meets indoors. Due to the limited number of indoor venues, the majority of Nebraska schools did not compete last week. Despite this, we still saw some impressive marks. Here are a few that jumped out at us:
Boys
Charlie Thorne, LSE, 6.83 60m and 49.52 400
Juan Gonzalez, Fremont, 1:56.75 800
Josiah Quinones, Beatrice, 1:57.3 800
Tommy Rice, Skutt, 1:57.7 800 and 9:36 3200
Boston Irish, Cozad, 16-00 PV
Maddox Wagoner, Kenesaw, 6-06 HJ
Drew Streich, Norfolk, 6-06 HJ
Maurice Purify, Westside, 23-01.25 LJ
Barrett Wilke, Stanton, 62-11.5 SP
Ike Ackerman, Central, 61-11.5 SP
Derek Russell, Kimball, 170-06 discuss (a 22-foot PR)
Gavin Kelch, Syracuse, 165-10 discus
Girls
Jacie Rexilius, Linc Christian, 7.65 60, 24.76 200
Kerstyn Chapek, Neumann, 7.86 60, 25.68 200, 58.13 400
Macie Reiner, Bennington, 58.69 400, one of 5 Class B girls under 60
Kendall Zavala, Norris, 5:14 1600, 11:07 3200
Cece Kramper, Duchense, 5:13 1600
Atlee Wallman, Norris, 11:07 3200
Kate Ebmeier, MWest, 11:03 3200
EJ Brown, ElkSouth, 5-08 HJ
Alyssa Onnen, Kearney Catholic, 12-6 PV
Kennedy Bailey, Dundy County Stratton, 144-01 discus (16' PR), 43-7 SP (2-06 PR)
Autumn L'Ecuyer, Fairbury, 44-07.50 SP (3-02.5 PR)
In mid-April, once we have two weeks of outdoor marks under our belt, we'll begin publishing our top-15 marks for each event in each class.
Results
Our Results page at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/trackresults has been updated with links to results for last week's seventeen meets.
The Results page also includes this week's meet schedule. With over 40 high school meets scheduled for this week, we will need our followers' help to track down results that aren't published to athletic.net.
Photos
The Nerds took baby steps last week, shooting six meets. We have already posted photos for the Thursday and Friday afternoon sessions at CSM, the Friday morning session at Concordia and the Saturday session at Concordia. We still owe you photos from Thursday at UNK and Saturday at Wayne State. As always, you can find race albums on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PrepRunningNerd/photos_albums. Here are a few of the photos:
Running is apparently a contact sport
At the Concordia meet on Saturday, Josh Bradley of Lincoln Southeast started off the second leg of the 4x800 by getting his left foot stepped on within the exchange zone. Spike injuries aren't that unusual in competitive races over 400 meters, but Josh's injuries weren't the normal scratch-on-a-calf-or-shin variety. Instead, he took a spike on the top of his foot, leaving his foot soaked in blood by the end of his 2:03 split. Concordia Coach Beisel's wife was working at an urgent care center that morning, so Josh was rushed there to receive a total of seven stitches.
The picture below illustrates what was left of Josh's left shoe after the ordeal. We're excited to see how fast Josh runs this season when he's not bleeding profusely.
Getting better
I've run across a few podcasts and social media posts from professional runners giving their opinions on why races times from 800 meters on up are dropping across all levels - youth, high school, college and professional. These seem to be the common themes:
We saw the first jump with the introduction of super shoes for racing; most brands came on the market in 2020 and 2021, just in time to meet the 'commercially available four months before a competition' requirement so they could be worn in the 2021 Olympics. Most top-level high school athletes were wearing super shoes by 2023.
The second jump of performance came with the integration of super shoes into high-intensity workouts which, in theory, allow athletes to recover more quickly. As Kara Goucher noted in her "Nobody Asked Us" podcast, if the shoes allow a high-level athlete to squeeze in 3-4 more workouts per month, that extra workload can pay dividends over an extended period. At the high school level, Olympian Rory Linkletter suggests these three factors have led to reduced times: (a) harder training at earlier ages, (b) access to more training information, and (c) a better understanding of how training in super shoes can lead to better race results. Before you conclude that super shoes should be worn 24 hours a day, there are a number of drawbacks, including these two: (a) super shoes are incredibly expensive workout shoes that typically become less effective by 150-240 miles of use and (b) there seems to be a potential increase in the risk of injury related to them, notably for mid-foot stress fractures, plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendinitis.
The reasons for the third jump in performance - witness the mile, 3000 and 5000 indoor world records in the last two months - are less clear. Perhaps we'll know the reason(s) for sure in a few years.
As always, the best approach for high school athletes to improve is to (a) gradually increase your workload over several years and (b) work with your coach to develop the program that keeps you healthy and improving. We've seen far too many ambitious runners spend a season on the sidelines because they ran themselves into a stress fracture.
Commitments
We're behind schedule in creating a XC/T&F college commitment list for the Class of 2025. Please email us at jayslagle@hotmail.com or DM us on FB or Twitter and tell us the following: athlete name, high school name, college name, and discipline (sprints, distance or field). We'll start building the list.
Red light, green light
I work for a large ophthalmology practice, and a few months ago I sat in on a physician discussion about the use of red light therapy to prevent the progression of dry macular degeneration (this is where you start yawning). My boss then shared that she suffered a painful back injury a few years ago and, after failing to find a solution to her pain for over a year, she became pain-free almost immediately after starting red light therapy.
There is a theory, and not much more than that, that the combination of red LED light and near-infrared light can heal damaged muscles by increasing the production of mitochondria. I'm not sharing this for our high school athletes who have rubber-band bodies, but rather for the ol' beat-up parents like me who are trying to remain active despite accumulating a few decades worth of wear-and-tear. If you're interested in reading a summary of the studies on red light therapy (also known as photobiomodulation), you can go to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5167494/.
Red light therapy is best known for its perceived usefulness at reducing wrinkles and acne, but it's also being studied for the potential to reduce the impact of dementia, joint and muscle pain, arthritis, tendinopathy and hair loss. Because red light therapy does not use ultraviolet rays, at this point there is no evidence that it causes cancer. My dermatology PA, whom I see regularly due to a history of skin cancer, gave me the all-clear to try red light therapy for my running-related inflammation and soreness. The Cleveland Clinic and WebMD websites aren't all-in on red light therapy, but they also suggest it has the possibility to be helpful.
It's too early to tell if this will be an effective supplement for my marathon training but I'm definitely red light curious. For the past month I've been going to the Beem Light Sauna in Omaha, and it's been a positive experience for me. (Disclosure: I have no financial relationship with Beem and I pay the monthly fee that everyone else pays.) If your muscles and joints are as creaky as mine, it may be worth investigating.
This and that
For the 25th time in the 40 years of the Barkley Marathons, no one finished what is often called the world's toughest ultramarathon. The race was held last week in Tennessee, and consists of five 20-26 mile loops which must be completed in less than sixty hours. A record five runners completed the event last year, but only one runner managed to finish three loops (aka, 'the Fun Run') in this year's race.
We mentioned last week that UNK/Fremont alum Wes Ferguson finished 3rd in the US Indoors 800, running the 6th fastest indoor 800 in US history. He was one spot and 0.66 seconds away from qualifying for the World Indoor meet. His race looks even more impressive after the US champion, Josh Hoey, won the World Indoor 800 title over the weekend.
It appears that the Bellevue East track may be the place to be on Thursday, April 3rd. We've been informed that Gretna East's Braden Lofquest, the current Class B 1600 record holder at 4:12.11, will be racing in the 1600 against former Class B 1600 record holder Tommy Rice of Skutt (PR of 4:15). The field is expected to also include an athlete capable of splitting at or just above 2:00 for the first 800 meters. Both boys are in fine form: Braden ran two 4:07 out-of-season indoor miles this winter while Tommy ran a 9:36 3200 and 1:57 800 at an indoor meet last week. The All-Class 1600 record is held by Juan Gonzalez, who ran 4:08.61 last spring. Juan ran a out-of-season 4:04.63 1600 in February and is likely to break his own record this spring.
The Nerd team has been nominated for an OSCAS! The Omaha Sports Commission holds an annual awards show to select the Omaha Metro's outstanding male and female athletes, male and female coaches, team, moment of the year, sportsperson of the year, and the Steve Pivovar Sports Media Person of the Year. We've been nominated in the last category. At least one of the athletes we cover has also been nominated: Omaha Westside alum and current K-State athlete Stella Miner, who holds the All-Class 800-meter record. You can find more information on the OSCAS at https://www.omahasports.org/oscas.
******
First published at www.preprunningnerd.com by Jay Slagle on March 26,2025. If you find an error, shoot us an e-mail at jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll get it fixed.
Like this coverage of the Nebraska T&F and cross country scene? There's more of this at www.preprunningnerd.com. Check out the Blog tab for our frequent stories and the Results tab for every Nebraska high school meet we can find. If you want to see meet photos or just need to kill a few hours on social media, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @PrepRunningNerd or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/preprunningnerd.
Finally, if you think runners, jumpers and throwers are the best things on earth, you'll enjoy our two most popular articles. In 2018 we published "The Runner with the Broken Heart" about a high school boy who finished last in nearly every race he ran. In 2022 we published, "The Fall and Rise of Emmett Hassenstab
Comments