A week after winning a pair of dual meets on its home course, the women's cross country team faced a different challenge on Saturday--running in a big invitational meet.
Duke tied Furman for second place in the Greensboro Invitational on Saturday afternoon. The Blue Devils' 86 points left them behind only Ohio University (52 points) in the final standings of the meet.
Junior Raquel Salume led Duke with her sixth-place finish. Salume's 18:35 time was a 37-second improvement over her performance last Saturday in Duke's wins over Yale and Virginia Tech.
Salume felt that there were several reasons why she ran better this weekend. For one thing, the race was run at 1 p.m., which is closer to the time when the Blue Devils usually practice than morning meets are. Also, the course is not quite as hilly as the one at Duke. But perhaps the biggest difference for Salume on Saturday was the number of competitors--About 140 runners from 19 teams participated in the Greensboro Invitational.
"I think that having more competitive people from more teams helps me," Salume said.
Freshman Kim Folk, who completed the five-kilometer race in 19:00, was the second Duke runner and the 10th overall finisher. Freshman Kim Reynolds was 12th in 19:03, and sophomore Erin Fleming placed 18th with a time of 19:11. The Blue Devils were particularly pleased that the difference between their first four runners was only 36 seconds.
One reason that Salume, Folk, Reynolds and Fleming were able to remain relatively close to one another was their strategy near the start of the meet. Early in the race, the course narrowed to a trail, and Duke's four top runners managed to stay in the top pack.
"There were a lot of people hitting each other with elbows and pushing for position early on," Salume said. "It was a weird race, because after the beginning, we stayed in the forest for two miles, and there was no one there to cheer us on or give us times. I didn't have anyone to run with for a while, and I felt like I was just waiting for something to happen."
Folk, who did not have as fast a time as she had hoped because she has been sick, had different problems with the course.
"The narrow trail does make it difficult because it's harder to pass," Folk said. "At one point, I was behind two Ohio runners, and they worked together to keep me from passing for a while. I was eventually able to get past them."
The rest of the Duke team moved closer to the top four runners. Junior Kathy Lockwood (20:16), sophomore Megan Pash (20:18) and freshmen Helen Boussious (20:20) and Rachel Cyrus (20:45) were all able to stay relatively close to one another throughout the race, finishing between 40th and 49th overall.
The Blue Devils are not concerned that there is a big gap between their fourth and fifth runners, however, because sophomore Kristin Faraguna has been out with a knee injury.
"We're really looking forward to having Kristin back soon," Salume said.
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