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| Invitational Junior 10k
Sponsored by Salt Lake Running Company
Thursday July 24, 2008 - Salt Lake City, Utah
DyeStat on-site with Dave Devine
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USA All-Star boys, Utah All-Star girls take team titles
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|  | Girls Jr 10k winner Shalaya Kipp
| Fast Running Blog (UT) teammates (l-r) Thatcher Olson, Hayden Hawks and Nate Jewkes (all photos by Mark Olson)
| Boys Jr 10k winner Bobby Nicolls
| | | Colorado connection helps Nicolls and Appel lead USA All-Stars to boys team title
Race story by Dave Devine, DyeStat senior editor
Call it a handy Colorado connection. Call it insider information from a helpful former contestant. Call it a survival tip for a 10k race course that plummets 700 feet from start to finish—most of that in the first three miles. Call it what you will, but in the cool, pre-dawn light of Thursday morning, in the hills above Salt Lake City, Bobby Nicolls and Evan Appel leveraged separate pre-race conversations with fellow-Coloradoan Kevin Williams to produce a pair of sterling runs at the 2008 Deseret News Junior 10k.
Williams, a recent D’Evelyn CO grad now heading to the University of Oklahoma after a highly successful senior year, was a competitor in the Junior 10k last summer as part of the USA All-Star team, where he faded to 18th late in the race after pounding the downhills in the ambitious early miles. While upbeat about the outcome given the low-key nature of the race, he knew he'd gone out too hard and it cost him. In the days leading up to this year’s Deseret race, he passed along this hard-earned lesson to the two Colorado stars succeeding him in Salt Lake.
“I talked to Kevin before I came,” 10th place finisher Evan Appel said after the race, “and he told me he went out too fast, so I tried to be more conservative.”
 Eighth placer Bobby Nicolls echoed a similar refrain. “I talked to Kevin a week ago, and I asked him what I should do, and he said don’t go out too fast. So I was trying to run 4:50 [for the first mile] and I still went 4:40, so I kind of listened…People would fly past in the first part of the race, getting away from me on the downhills, but then I’d catch them on the flats.”
The Junior 10k is a race within the larger 10k road race, a team competition pitting assembled groups of athletes under the age of 19 against one another, with the top three from each team contributing to scoring based on place. The overall men's race was won by 28 year-old Australian Andrew Letherby in 28:21, but Nicolls and Appel accounted themselves well with their top ten finishes in the competitive field. Nicolls kept contact with a trailing pack throughout, and then moved up when the race hit flatter ground to finish eighth in 30:20.1, a time which was faster than any of the Junior boys last year. Appel wasn’t far behind, overcoming a conservative start and a self-described “bad decision” to wear cross country racing flats to nail down tenth place in 30:38.6.
“I didn’t peak for this or anything,” Appel allowed afterwards. “I mean, I went 10 miles yesterday in like 90 degree heat, so I was happy with how it went.”
Buoyed by that pair of top ten finishes, and the 15th place, 31:01.4 effort of Galena NV senior-to-be Bryan Tibaduiza (left, photo by Mark Olson), the USA All-Stars handily took the boys’ team title with a mere 7 points. The fourth member of the All-Star team was Hayden Hohnholt, a multiple-time Wyoming state champ who injured his hip at a basketball camp shortly before the race and still managed a 33:22, 34th place finish.
Upstart Fast Running Blog boys take second
A bit of a surprise in the boys' runner-up slot was a Utah team called Fast Running Blog, comprised of three recent high school grads and one rising senior. They defeated the race-sponsored Utah All-Stars by two points, scoring 18 to the All-Stars’ 20. Mountain Crest UT grad Neal Ferrin (17th 31:16.2) and Bingham UT grad Nate Jewkes (18th 31:25.5) led the way for Fast Running, but it was their tight pack that carried the day, as Snow Canyon UT senior-to-be Hayden Hawks (20th 32:17.3) and Skyline UT grad Thatcher Olson (21th 32:18.6) gave them a 1-4 spread of just 1:02, far superior to any other team on the course.
Asked if they were gunning for runners wearing the black singlets which race organizers provided to the two All-Star teams, all four members of Fast Running Blog nodded their heads in agreement.
“Yeah, that was the plan,” Olson confirmed.
 Although his Utah All-Stars finished third as a team, recent Mountain View UT grad Travis Fuller (right, photo by Mark Olson) turned in what might be considered the race of the day. Wrapping up what is only his first full year of competitive running, the former soccer player hung close to two Foot Locker finalists in Nicolls and Appel, eventually crossing 12th in 30:45.0. Recently signed to BYU, Fuller says he’s still learning this whole running thing, but felt good about the effort.
“It was pretty good, for my first one,” he said, marveling at how they’d been “flying down those hills.”
Halfway through his first summer of real training, he was looking forward to college and the prospect of actually being prepared for the cross country season this time around.
Kipp fronts Utah All-Stars to girls team win
If the boys race was a case of vaunted out-of-staters coming in to grab the trophy, the girls race was a matter of talented Utahans defending their home turf.
Skyline High rising senior Shalaya Kipp, a runner-up in last fall’s state cross country meet, fronted a Utah All-Star squad that bolted to the team title with 11 points over the USA All-Stars’ total of 18. Kipp ran 37:19.2 to place 18th overall in a women’s race won by Weber State grad Sariah Long in 33:04. It was Kipp’s first time running the race, but her lack of familiarity with the course didn’t stop her from topping recently graduated rival Natalie Haws (20th 37:37.5) of Davis High, a school which annually forms a team to contest the event.
“I tried to go out conservative,” Kipp said afterwards, “and I was definitely aware of where Natalie was in the race.”
Kipp, who is also a competitive downhill skier in the winter, and typically starts track sometime in April, was using this race as a fun mid-summer tune-up for a cross country season in which she hopes to regain the 2006 state title she narrowly lost to Haws last fall. Backing up her winning effort for the Utah All-Stars were Kirsten Sly (22nd 37:52.7), Chloe Calton (28th 38:57.0) and Taylor Thornley (30th 39:19.9).
Former Rock Springs WY teammates Jenna Allais (21st 37:50.2) and Nicole Peterson (42nd 40:37.1) helped pace the USA All-Star Girls to the runner-up position. Allais--who recently graduated--and Peterson--who will be a junior in the fall--both enjoyed the race and felt it was worth the two-and-a-half drive from Wyoming.
“It was fun,” Peterson said. “Everybody was shouting ‘Go USA!’”
Kaylee Campbell of Preston ID split the Wyoming pair with her 36th place, 39:56.5 finish, contributing as the #2 scorer for the US squad.
“This was nice,” she said after the race. “It gets me motivated for training again.”
With an opportunity to measure their talent against some top regional talent and break up a long summer of mileage, the 10k was almost certainly motivational for all the prep participants, while it presented a fall preview of some of the nation's top harriers for the rest of the country.
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Deseret News 10k Index
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