Since finishing their most recent race—the Pomona-Pitzer Cross Country Invitational— on Pomona’s rain-washed blue track early on Oct. 2, the excessively fit male harriers have run five hard workouts, two Sunday morning long runs, and as many as 160 miles. They are in preparation for their first SCIAC com- petition, SCIAC Multi-Duals, to be held the morning of Oct. 16 at La Mirada Park.

Every race, every mile, and every workout has its place in the season’s plan and objec- tive, each day building on those before it. However, Multi-Duals signals the beginning of the team’s more important competitions. Previous meets, although scored and taken seriously, included teams from all NCAA divisions (as well as NAIA and community college teams), and the results had no impor- tance beyond each specific race.

Multi-Duals, however, includes only SCIAC teams. It is the first meet of the 2010

season in which everyone in the league will race against one another, and as such, it will give runners and spectators a more accurate guess at how the teams and top individuals might stack up when all is said and done.

The race, in addition to providing a neat page of results on which to base predictions for SCIAC championships, counts for half of the final league standings, both for in- dividuals and for teams. Although nothing is decided definitively on the rolling hills and thick, muddy grass of La Mirada Park, a strong performance can set a team up for SCIAC glory, and a poor one can all but take a team out of the running. In the event of a tie—for example, if two teams place first and second at Multis and then the reverse at SCIACs—the tiebreaker is the result at the later meet.

Of course, things can change drastically in two weeks, especially in cross country where every course is unique and each race demands so much mental and physical inten- sity and sharpness. At Multi-Duals in 2008, for example, CMS and P-P came in as the favorites, but were easily and embarrassingly beaten by a shockingly strong Occidental team that attacked the steepest, toughest sec- tions of the hilly course, leaving most of their rivals far behind and below. Two weeks later, however, CMS edged Oxy out by a mere six points for first, taking the league title.

In 2009, CMS trounced the rest of the league at Multi-Duals, sweeping five of the other seven teams (meaning they placed five runners before another team’s first runner). They easily beat the slightly more competi- tive squads from Oxy and P-P. Although CMS also triumphed at SCIACs to win its second consecutive league title, it did so by the nar- rowest of margins: P-P and CMS runners alternated for the top ten spots.

The runners on each of the eight SCIAC teams have been training hard for months with these late season races in mind. Luckily for P-P, though, the races run in September and early October—such as the above-men- tioned P-P Invitational and the earlier UC Riverside Invitational—can give us a sense of what to expect on Sat- urday as some 90 runners strain to complete the eight kilometer race as quickly as possible.

The team title is beginning to look more and more like a two- team battle—or as our neighbors, the Stags, would likely say, a one-team show. CMS’s confidence certainly is warranted, whether their cockiness is in good taste or not: they are the only SCIAC team currently ranked in the top 35 in the nation (21st, in fact). In both of their races with a full team against P-P they easily dominated, sweep- ing the Sagecocks both times.

The Pomona-Pitzer harriers are an easy choice for second, having beaten every SCIAC team besides CMS by over 30 seconds per run- ner and over 50 points at their most recent meet.

Although rival runners, such as Kris Brown CM ’11, have made inflammatory, self-confidence- bolstering comments regarding the disparity in ability between the Claremont rivals, the view is decidedly different among those at Pomona and Pitzer.

Asked after a workout what he thought our chances of vic- tory were, Ryan Rosmarin PZ ’14, curly locks swishing about like an octopus’s tentacles, returned the question. I told him I though we could win. He replied agreeably:

“Yeah, yeah, I think we can win it. Let’s win it.”

The members of P-PXC cer- tainly aren’t boasting of a guar- anteed triumph on Saturday. The progress the runners have made over the last two months, however—from the quality of their workouts, to their tactics and maturity in races, to their unity and coherence as a group—gives them good reason to believe in, if not a win, at least a competitive race, and another step toward taking the title on Oct 30.

Following these two teams in the conference battle are Occiden- tal, La Verne, and Redlands, who all finished within eight points of one another at the meet two weeks ago. Although Occidental finished third, they are led by the fastest front-runner of the gang, and have become known in recent years for their dramatic late-season improvements.

The individual side of things appears to be more up in the air than the team competition, with no clear favorite having emerged decisively. This comes as somewhat of a surprise, as the two-time defending Multi- Duals and SCIACs champion Eric Kleinsasser OXY ’12 is returning and has never lost a SCIAC cross country meet.

The young Viking’s season has been slowed, though— he broke his collar bone while participat- ing in some shenanigans earlier in the season. His improvement, however, should prove to be quick and steady, and there’s little doubt that he will be on the hunt for the championship cup.

CMS has a very deep, consis- tent team this year, but just as important to their strength as a group are their two front-runners, Kris Brown and Brian Sutter CM ’13, who have led the Stags since mid-September. Sutter has the top eight-kilometer time of the year for SCIAC runners—25:07 at UC Riverside—and is coming off an impressive freshman track season.

Brown has been racing closely behind Sutter and is in fantastic shape after living in Nepal dur- ing the spring, logging countless miles at altitude and recording his thoughts and feelings in an unlined Moleskine notebook.

Charlie Enscoe PO ’11—of TSL Men’s Cross Country article fame—has led the Sagecocks in races thus far, and hopes, he tells me now, to mix things up with Kleinsasser and CMS’s top run- ners. Based on a recent two-mile repeat workout, however, Assis- tant Captain Paul Balmer PO ’12 and Hale Shaw PZ ’12 should be just as, if not more, dangerous in the individual competition.

All things said, Multi-Duals promises to be an exciting SCIAC competition, full of the inter-team love and intra-team feuding that makes any meeting between arti- ficially divided groups of young men so compellingly weighty.