January: An ND Runner Month-in-Review

I'm starting to a new thing where I attempt to give something like a summary of what's been going on in the world of running in North Dakota. My goal is to find as much info as I can about different races, both here and out-of-state but with North Dakotans competing. We'll see how this goes.
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Well January is behind us. We had warmth, brutal cold, and then warmth again. It's too early for the high school teams to unify and start practices, so that leaves us with college competition and some professional activity.

Women's Race of the Month: I don't think this is even close: the mile at the Bison Classic in Fargo on the 16th. Looking at the heat sheets beforehand, this was the list of top competitors:
-Erin Teschuk, D1 All-American in Cross Country and Track, Representative of Canada at World Outdoors last August
-Maddie Van Beek, Former D1 All-American in Track competing unattached (now competing for Brooks)

Zeis (formerly of Bismarck High)
is tearing up D2 right now.
*From U-Mary's website*

-Alexis Zeis, D2 National XC Champion in 2015 and All-American in the indoor 3000m
-Molly Montonye, D2 All-American in both the indoor mile and outdoor 1500m

Well, as could have been predicted, the race was pretty darn fast, with Erin Teschuk (NDSU) winning in 4:37, which from what I have been able to find serves as the fastest women's mile run on North Dakota soil. The second-place finisher was Alexis Zeis (U-Mary), and her time of 4:49 still as of January 31st stands as the fastest time in women's Division 2 so far this indoor season (and snuck into my top-ten lists as well). Molly Montonye (MSUM) was third in 5:00, a time that sits her at 13th place in Division 2 at this point. So, it's safe to say
that there was plenty of talent in the Shelly Ellig Indoor Track Facility in Fargo earlier this month.

Men's Race of the Month: I have to give a hat tip to Jake Leingang and his 8:10 in the 3k this past weekend down in Arkansas, but I'd like to go to another former Bismarck runner doing some pretty neat things out west.

They should've given Gotta
at least 3 more seconds
for the stache.
*From MSU's website*

Remember Matt Gotta (Bismarck High)? He won the Class A 1600m (4:16) and 3200m (9:15) at the ND State Track Meet back in 2014. Now he's running for Montana State in Bozeman. Just this last weekend he raced in Gillette, Wyoming and raced an altitude-and-track-converted 3k time of 8:20.68. This places him third in the Big Sky conference and is the equivalent of a sub-9 in the 3200m. He also ran an altitude-converted 14:54 in the 5k earlier this month. Watch out for this guy in the coming months!

From Roesler's Instagram

So what else has been going on? Well, Laura Roesler (Fargo native and professional trackster) is back from an injury-plagued 2015 season and is getting the rust out. She raced three times this month, running the 800 in 2:05, 2:04, and 2:03 respectively. Building up for the grind to the Olympics!

Hovind isn't even a senior yet!
*From NSU's Website*

Back to Division II for a moment. On the 23rd down at the Jim Emmerich Invitational at South Dakota State University, a Northern State University record was broken in the 3000m. Sasha Hovind ran 9:58.9 to break her own school record and at the time was in the top 20 in DII. According to NSU's website, Hovind is from Stirum, ND, and in high school XC she competed for Lisbon, while in high school track she competed for Sargent County. I can only find her in state results her senior year (if I'm woefully off forgive me), where she was top-20 at 2012 State XC and 12th in the 1600 and 4th in the 3200 at 2013 State Track. She also has the indoor 5k, outdoor 5k, and outdoor 10k records at Northern State, while she was also an XC All-American. From doing this research, I've also added her to the top-10 lists now too. Go Class B!!!

The last race I'll mention is actually the men's mile from the aforementioned Bison Classic. State Class B record-holder in the 1600 and 3200 Elliot Stone competed unattached for NDSU and ran 4:22, while former EDC champ Camron Roehl (NDSU) ran 4:19. An interesting side-note of the race was that Andrew Carlson rabbited the first 800. Carlson is coaching at NDSU now after a career that gave him the fastest 5k and 10k times ever by a North Dakotan. Ironically enough I just came across this article talking about next month's Olympic Trials Marathon (http://www.run2run.com/learning-from-the-2012-olympic-marathon-trials/) in which I was reminded that 4 years ago he took 6th with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes. Dang!

Next month we got track meets everywhere, people getting in serious training for the Fargo Marathon, and don't high school practices start around the end of February? Anyway, that's all for now- thanks for reading!