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Mary Cullen of Providence made a strong move with a mile remaining to win the women's 5,000m final in 16:01.39, outrunning Notre Dame's Molly Huddle (16:05.93).
The race started with Michigan's Alyson Kohlmeier and Pittsburgh's Maureen McCandless in the front, but after a lap or two McCandless was firmly in command. She pulled them through the first kilometer in 3:10.5 with Huddle, Cullen, and NC State's Julia Lucas close behind at the head of the pack.
The field actually stayed intact through 2k (6:30.10) and 3k (9:52.91), at which point they were moving so slowly that when Kohlmeier fell on the backstretch, she was able to get back up and not only regain contact within 150m, but move around the pack and into her previous position. Kohlmeier's teammate Erin Webster and Wichita State's Desiraye Osburn at different points broke out of the mob and moved around to better positions close to the front, but neither chose to take the lead.
Finally Webster moved to the front with four laps remaining and broke for home. Huddle and Cullen both covered the move, but on the next lap Cullen moved out on her own, with McCandless attempting pursuit. McCandless didn't keep contact long, and as Cullen passed the 4k mark in 13:05.54 it was up to Huddle, Osburn and Webster to chase her down.
Try as she might, though, Huddle could neither make up ground on Cullen nor break away from Webster and Osburn. As Cullen logged successively faster laps, when Huddle finally hit her top speed and began to separate from the other two, the closest she could get to Cullen was three seconds. Cullen clocked 4:46 for her last 1600m, a convincing exclamation point on Coach Ray Treacy's remark two days earlier that "Mary has the fastest mile time in the field."
"I got caught on the inside a bit," Cullen explained afterwards, "and I thought, I've got to get out of here. But then I felt pretty good and I figured I'd just make my move now. I kept winding it up and winding it up. It hurt on the last lap, but it's a big delight for me, after I had a bit of a disaster indoors. I'm so happy right now. It was really tough; I'm usually a front runner, so being in there getting kicked around and bumped a bit, with people pushing your back, it's hard. All you want to do is go, but you don't want to go too soon, like I did in indoor. It's a lot harder to be chased than the one chasing after."
"I'm kind of prolonging my season to run the European Championships in August, in Sweden. My coach thought maybe I'd run the 10,000m here, but it was hard enough at Big East running against Molly."
"We've always built speed into my workouts, but I train with Kim Smith, Amy Rudolph and Marie Davenport. Those girls make me fast enough."
Behind Cullen and Huddle, Webster and Osburn were third and fourth, in 16:06.38 and 16:10.76, respectively. Scoring was completed by Wake Forest's Michelle Sikes (16:12.14), Kohlmeier (16:13.09), McCandless (16:14.10) and Stanford's Katy Trotter (16:15.51).
Posted by Parker Morse at 11:44 p.m. | Tags: Race Reports, 2006 NCAA Outdoor T&F Champs
Kathy commented, on June 10, 2006 at 7 p.m.:
I live in Elmira, NY and I just want to say how proud I am of Molly Huddle! You go girl!!