Nathanael Races to Conference Qualifying Mark in the 1500m

April was another great month for Nathanael on the track.  The month started with his third win in three weeks with the top mark in his heat of the 800m (5th place overall) with a personal best time of 2:00.37 (photo right), at the University of Puget Sound JD Shotwell Invitational.

A week later at the Ralph Vernacchia Team Meet at Western Washington University his 2:01.87 time in the 800m was only good enough for 22nd out of 35 runners at this much bigger event. 

On Saturday, April 18th, Nate took 3rd in the 1500m run at the PLU Invitational with a time of 4:09.10.  (Teammate Chad Meis won the race in 3:57.34.)  The provisional qualifying time for the GNAC conference championships is 4:08.00, so he had come up just 1.10 seconds short.  At that meet he did, however, anchor SPU's third place 4x400m relay team with a time of 3:34.31 in only their first 4x400m race this season.  That one race qualified him to travel with the team to the conference championships the first weekend in May at Western Oregon University.

But Nathanael had one last chance to qualify in his own right by running the 1500m on Friday night, April 24th, at the Western Washington Twilight meet.  His team came to his aid by running Dan Hamilton with him.  The 1500m is a 3.75 lap race.  Nathanael said he'd run the first 1.75 laps but asked Dan to lead on lap three.  This he did, and Nathanael stayed right on his tail.  Before the final lap began, Nate passed Dan, who was spent and finished in 15th place out of the 19 runners.  Nathanael ran a blistering final lap which left "the pack" far behind. Three top runners had already been leading but Nate took 4th with a GNAC provisional qualifying meet time of 4:07.59, just 0.41 seconds better than the qualifying standard.  He qualified to run in the conference championships as the 15th of 16 runners in the 1500m.

Having achieved his most important season goal, Nate traveled with the team to Western Oregon University in Monmouth on Thursday, April 30th.   The team got this news at their team meeting in the hotel on Thursday night in Oregon.   So Nathanael returned from Oregon undefeated!

April 30, 2009
MONMOUTH, Ore. -- The Great Northwest Athletic Conference has canceled this weekend's conference track and field championship meet in Monmouth, Ore., GNAC Commissioner Richard Hannan announced Thursday night.  The cancellation is due to a probable single case of H1NI virus (swine flu) on the Western Oregon University campus. The meet will not be rescheduled.  The Oregon University system and the Oregon Department of Public Health have recommended closure of the campus at least through Monday.