Crimson, Los Corredores find glory at Little Fifty

Madeline Haller predicted it.

After failing to place first in her two previous attempts, the now three-time Little Fifty participant told her father that her Crimson running team would win the Thursday race — a bold, albeit accurate, prediction.

Crimson, finishing with a time of 1:08:08, won the eighth-annual Little Fifty women’s race at Bloomington High School North on Thursday during rather temperate conditions.

In the battle for “campus-wide running supremacy,” the Crimson team, comprised of juniors Haller and Chelsea Sutton and freshmen Becky Boyle and Sarah Turner, never surrendered a lead accrued midway in the 20,000 yard, four-person relay race.

“It feels amazing,” said Haller, who is also an IDS reporter. “We just get closer and closer every year. It feels good to get this.”

In the men’s race, Los Corredores was not challenged after obtaining its lead after about 25 laps. With 10 laps to go, Los Corredores, made up of sophomore Andrew Schroyer and freshmen

Michael Nussa, Dan Phistry and Kyle Brehm, had a 39-second advantage on the second-place finisher.

“This is the best that we’ve ever run in the seven months we’ve been working out together,” Schroyer said. “It’s just a dream come true.”
The beginning pace was unforeseen for the male victors, but adjusting proved manageable.

“We had a plan to just run our own race and be smart about it,” Nussa said. “The first few laps were faster than we thought, but we were like, ‘Hey, everyone is doing it, and we are just as good as anyone
out here.’”

Instead of focusing on a regimented system, Crimson adopted a more fluid race-day strategy, one dictated primarily by how its runners felt throughout the race.

Two teams finished the entire 50 laps during the women’s race: Crimson and second-place team Cream (1:09:44), who ranked first after qualifications.

On the men’s side, The Seaward (55:53) took second place while Phresh (56:14) placed third.

“We realized we could not focus too much on ‘This is how it needs to be,’” Haller said. “We just wanted to focus on how each other felt.”