Season gets serious at Notre Dame Invitational

The honeymoon is over for the IU men's cross country team. After several weeks of training and low-key competition, the men travel to South Bend tomorrow for the Notre Dame Invitational, where they will line up against last year's NCAA Champion Stanford University. Somehow, IU will still be missing one thing that every other sport at IU has.\n"We still haven't gotten our adidas jerseys," senior Tom Burns said.\nUnlike catalog orders, distance running involves such delicate planning to have all seven athletes ready to perform at their very best on one specific day, that it is often difficult to decipher the strength of a squad from any one meet leading up to the NCAA Championships. Last year, IU used the Murray Keating Invitational in Maine to gauge its progress.\n"Notre Dame this year is a lot like last year's meet in Maine," said IU All-American alumnus Chris Powers. "It's a good opportunity to go head to head with quality teams like Stanford early in the year to see where your fitness is."\nIU is no stranger to top competition, having finished 12th at last year's NCAA Championships. The race will help determine the fitness of each athlete, and also serve as a barometer for how IU stacks up against the NCAA's perennial powerhouses. It will be a test not only for the team as a whole but for important IU individuals.\nJunior All-Americans Sean and John Jefferson, along with Burns, are accustomed to NCAA-level competition, having run both in the NCAA Cross Country and Track and Field Championships. Additionally, juniors Stephen Haas, Eric Redman and Charlie Koeppen have all competed at the cross country championships, lending valuable experience to the team's readiness. \nThe Jefferson twins in particular have an extra advantage on the Notre Dame course, which is devoid of hills but fraught with tight turns, because flat courses favor runners with the best pure speed. Sean and John might have more pure speed than anyone else in the field, both boasting mile personal bests just above four minutes. \nThis bodes well for IU, as the meet serves as one of the only opportunities the men will have to score wins over top national teams to advance their chances of earning a berth to nationals. \nStill, despite the significance of the meet, IU will follow its usual pattern. The race is but a stepping stone for the truly important races at the end of the season.\n"We never tapered for it, we just threw some spikes on to see what happens," Powers said. "Then back to training to get ready for the real race in November."\nThe Hoosiers have been training exhaustively. Notre Dame is but a blip on the radar screen on the path to their ultimate goal. But in the end, hard work must be coupled with a bit of luck to achieve exceptional success.\n"Cross country always takes a little bit of luck," John Jefferson said. "But I find the harder I train, the luckier I get."\n-- Contact staff writer Rob DeWitte at rdewitte@indiana.edu.