By Jim Hage
DERWOOD, MD (07-Feb) -- Meb Keflezighi won his third USA Cross Country title, barely holding off fast-closing Tim Nelson; both men were clocked officially in 36 minutes 6 seconds on a sometimes treacherous and always rolling 12 km course. Keflezighi took an early lead but, looking back repeatedly in the slightly uphill final straightaway, watched his 10-second lead dwindled to almost nothing.
“I knew he was getting close,” Keflezighi said, “but I didn’t know how far back … it’s good to know where he is.”
Nelson, who ran in a four-man chase pack for much of the race, took succor from Keflezighi’s apparent distress to close dramatically over the final two-hundred meters. “Every time he looked back, I kicked it up another gear,” Nelson said. “I just ran out of ground.”
Bobby Curtis, 2008 NCAA 5,000-meter champion from Villanova, finished third in 36:09, and Jorge Torres, Beijing Olympian at 10,000 meters, was fourth in 36:16. Ed Moran and Ryan Vail rounded out the top six and those eligible to compete at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan, on March 28. Anthony Famiglietti, who ran the steeplechase in Beijing and was among the pre-race favorites, finished 21st in 37:49.
“This [title] is a special one,” said Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic marathon silver medalist who missed most of last year with a stress reaction to his hip suffered in the 2008 Olympic Trials marathon in New York City. The national title is Keflezighi’s second of 2009 – he ran 1:01:25 to win the half-marathon championship on Jan. 18 in Houston.
Emily Brown, from Team USA Minnesota, dominated the women’s 8 km championship, running 26:58 to win by 32 seconds. Brown separated herself from the pack near the halfway mark, where training partner Katie McGregor dropped out. Brown ran the next two 2 km loops alone; Julie Culley, from nearby Arlington, Va., took second in 27:30 and Kathy Newberry, from Williamsburg, Va., finished third in 27:40.
Delilah (of the “Hey, There” song fame) DiCrescenzo, from New York, was fourth in 27:43, former Penn State athlete Rebecca Donaghue finished fifth in 27:46, and Samia Akbar, from nearby Herndon, Va., claimed the final team spot for Worlds (and made her second national team) in 28:02.
The men’s junior race, a showdown between two 18 year-old college freshmen, Oklahoma State's German Fernandez and Stanford's Chris Derrick, didn’t disappoint. Fernandez, who ran 3:56.50 for the mile indoors last month, ran 23:20 to win his second straight junior cross country title, beating Derrick by 19 seconds. Derrick was bruised and bloodied after falling on the sloppy course, but said he didn’t lose much time. “I got up pretty quick,” he said. “I was going downhill anyway.”
Neely Spence, daughter of 1992 Olympic trials marathon winner Steve Spence, won the junior women’s 6K race in 20:43, beating Ashley Brasovan from Wellington, Fla., last December's Foot Locker high school cross country championships runner-up.
Simon Gutierrez, 42, from Alamosa, Colo., won the masters race in 25:15, outkicking by five seconds Ray Pugsley, who turned 40 three days ago. The indefatigable Carmen Troncoso, 49, ran 30:10 to win the women’s masters race, beating Lisa Goldsmith, 44, by 30 seconds.
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