Williams Lake’s Conlan Sprickerhoff and fellow members of the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack cross country team were running indoors during the weekend at the Ryswyk Invitational Indoor Track Meet.
The event, held Feb. 13-14 at the Tournament Capital Centre in Kamloops, featured university athletes from across the province.
Sprickerhoff raced to a second-place finish in the men’s 1,500 metre in the 20-34 age class with a time of 4:22.56 on Saturday, then followed it up with a first-place result Sunday in the 800-metre race in a time of 2:04.88.
“He ran a five-second personal best in the 1,500 (metre),” said TRU cross country running team coach Carmin Mazzotta. “Even more impressive was the 800 (metre) on Sunday.
“We have not done any speed work to prepare for anything faster than the 1,500 but Conlan jumped into a shorter distance race and ran brilliantly. He led through the first 400, was passed on the third 200, but never dropped. With 200 to go he got on the lead runner’s shoulder and blew by him, closing his last 200 in 31 seconds for the win.”
Mazzotta said it was Sprickerhoff’s first competitive 800-metre race and added he ran it like someone who’s been running the event for years.
“We hope to get him under the two minute barrier this year,” he said. “The focus is to build as much speed as we can so his threshold is higher and he’s able to tolerate faster paces this fall in cross country.”
Sprickerhoff’s teammates Alesha Miller, Christa Miller and Nicole Vermey finished first, second and third, respectively, in the women’s 1,500 metres. Etienne Lavigne of Russell, Ont. was second in the men’s 400-metre dash on Saturday.
Sunday, Alesha was second in the women’s 20-34 800-metre, while sister Christa was third.
“A key piece of the transition we are making as a program to be able to compete at a Canadian Interuniversity Sport level in cross country is actually track and field,” Mazzotta said. “Training and competing through a track season allows runners to really focus on strength and conditioning, on developing speed, on fine-tuning form and on racing at an intensity that you often don’t find on the roads or trails.”
He added he’s seen some big improvements from Sprickerhoff in past months.
“(He) ran an amazing race with a very solid finishing kick on Sunday to win the 800,” he said.