The UCLA track and field distance runners will be the only group traveling from Westwood to this weekend’s Alex Wilson Invitational in Notre Dame, Indiana, following an impressive performance in last week’s Husky Classic. Sophomore Joe Herrera will join the senior trio of Nick Hartle, Austin O’Neil and Ferdinand Edman to make up the Bruin distance medley relay, or DMR, competing Saturday.
The DMR is a unique event, comprised of four legs, each of a different distance. The first leg is 1200 meters – three laps around a standard 400-meter track. Edman, who recently ran a split of 2 minutes, 56.39 seconds at the Razorback Invitational in Arkansas, will start off for UCLA.
Following the 1200-meter, the second leg constitutes a 400-meter sprint – just one lap around the track. The Bruins’ coaching staff has used both Herrera and freshman sensation Rai Benjamin for this part of the event throughout the season, most recently going with Herrera last week.
The third leg is an 800-meter dash. Hartle has taken these duties all season long, running the 800-meter dash both individually and in the relay.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to compete with the DMR again because we have a very good team that can qualify for nationals,” Hartle said. “Our practices this week have been geared towards executing our race strategy to the best of our abilities to try and qualify for nationals.”
The final leg of the relay – and possibly the Bruins’ strongest leg of the event – is the mile. O’Neil will again anchor, a week after nearly breaking four minutes in the 1600-meter race with a time of 4:00.19, and three weeks after splitting 4:05.76 in the DMR in Arkansas.
“Austin will be the mile leg and, that being the final leg of the relay, it’s just great to have him,” Hartle said. “He is in extremely good shape right now and this past weekend showed he is ready to break the four-minute barrier. I’m just excited to see how fast he can run this weekend.”
Last week, the Bruins were able to capture first place in the event with a time of 9:48.92, but featured freshmen Sahm Bazargan and Arturo Sotomayor in replacement of O’Neil and Hartle for the 1200- and 800-meter legs.
Sotomayor will also be traveling to Indiana this weekend as an alternate. He will compete in the mile race, making his first trip to Notre Dame. He achieved a personal best in the event last week, running 4:10.81 in Seattle. He did the same in the 800-meter dash during the week prior, running 1:52.81 in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“For the past three years in high school I trained alone, and to do so you always have to strive for a time to hit or a pace to keep,” Sotomayor said. “Moving forward to where I am now, it has been a great experience training with such experienced runners. It showed me that I can keep up and compete at the Division I level.”
Senior Lane Werley has also been training with the distance crew this week after competing last weekend in the 3000-meter run, but will not travel to Notre Dame for competition.
“I’m just focused on getting the qualifier in the 3K this year for nationals, so I won’t be competing this weekend,” Werley said. “But the rest of the guys have been having so many good weeks of practice, they look great and should be ready to roll this Saturday.”