(Cedar Falls) ACGC grad Kate Crawford has an optimistic outlook heading into year two as a distance runner at UNI.
The former state cross country champ for the Chargers will get her first real taste of cross country at the next level this fall. Crawford is coming off a very successful freshman season in track for the Panthers, but didn’t get to compete in cross country a year ago due to COVID. “We practiced every single day just as we would if we had the meets, but we just didn’t have the actual competitions. We ended up doing a few time trials just to give us the feel of competition, but that was just within our team.”
Crawford admits she surprised even herself with her performance as a freshman in track. During the indoor season she improved by nine seconds in the 3000 and continued to flourish into the outdoor season. “I was able to drop my 5K times down to under 18:00. So that was a big improvement from my 5K time in high school which was over 19:00. For the 10K, I was able to get on UNI’s all-time list which is the top ten times for each event so that was very exciting. I also placed in the conference meet in that event. It’s super exciting. There’s just so much great competition up in Cedar Falls so I was really surprised that I was able to perform that well, but it’s a great starting point to build off of for my next three years up there.”
She says she’ll be looking to build off of that this fall. A lot of miles were put in during the summer. “After the conference meet in the spring I had one week off and then it was right into summer training. I upped my mileage quite a bit this summer. I put in a ton of miles during the summer. It’s gone very well and I think it was a great time for some improvement I can build on in the fall. I’m super excited to see how my summer training pays off.” Over the summer she put in about 65 miles per week.
