COLBY CROSS COUNTRY CAMP INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE

2005 Season Recap

The men's cross country team ended the season on a solid note by finishing in 13th place out of 43 teams at the New England Regional NCAA qualifier.

John Swain, Jeff Alden and Dan Vassallo were the top runners for Colby this season. Swain finished a team-best 20th at the NESCAC meet and was sixth at the State of Maine meet.

2005 Season Preview

With the return of Colby's top four runners, the team looks to improve on its fourth place New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) finish in 2004. In that meet Colby followed only Tufts, Williams, and Amherst in one of the strongest conferences in the country.

The 2005 team will be led by tri-captains Jeff Alden '07 (Caribou, Maine), Fred Bailey '07 (Andover, Maine), and Dan Vassallo '07 (Wilmington, Mass.), who shared the team's number one spot throughout the '05 season. Alden was a member of the U.S. Junior Biathlon Team and is the State of Maine Class C 1,600-meter record holder at 4:17.12. Bailey posted the team's fastest five-mile run of the '05 season, 26:13, on the rain-soaked UMass-Dartmouth course. Vassallo continually improved over the 2004-05 cross country and track seasons and set a personal best of 15:19, in the indoor 5K run.

Other returning scorers from 2004 include Colby's top first-year harrier, Alex Gill '08 (Pentucket, Mass.), and Jon Reno '07 (Maple Grove, Minn.).

Program Overview

Blessed with a 714-acre campus that overlooks the Kennebec River Valley in central Maine, the Colby harriers are forever grateful to Judge and Mrs. Levin Campbell and their daughter Eleanor S. Campbell '81 of Cambridge, Mass., for their gift of The Campbell Trails, a racecourse trail system that winds through this spectacular pastoral setting.

Colby's harriers spend virtually every day running on trails, both for the benefits of a softer training surface and to better simulate the rigors of cross-country racing. In the early part of our season the team develops a strong base with long aerobic runs, hill work, and lactate threshold runs. As the team moves into the competitive part of the season, we add intensity with VO2 max intervals that develop our anaerobic energy systems. We prepare for the championship season with the introduction of shorter, faster intervals and a taper in overall mileage.

Daily runs are complemented with pool work consisting of aqua jogging, lap swimming, and water polo. Pool activity provides our runners valuable active recovery time for injury prevention. The team also works hard to develop core body strength that lends the stability needed for cross-country racing. Core strength is developed using medicine balls, thera-balls, and calisthenics.

Colby's cross-country program includes training trips throughout Maine. Popular destinations include Acadia National Park, the Belgrade Lakes region, and Sugarloaf Mountain. We thoroughly believe that variety in our training regimen has been instrumental to our success.

About Campbell Trails