USA Cross Country Championships Come to San Diego

SAN DIEGO, California (Ticker) - Ryan Hall already has his seat booked on the US team plane to Beijing for this summer's Olympic Games but he insists it will be business as usual at Saturday's 2008 USA Cross Country Championships.


Having won the USA Olympic men's marathon trial in New York last November, Hall is at liberty to relax and prepare for his first Olympiad this August without putting his body on the line in competition. Yet the 25-year-old is intent on gaining the top-nine finish in the men's 12-kilometer race at Mission Bay Park in San Diego this weekend that will earn him a place on the US team for next month's IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland. "My perception hasn't changed too much," Hall, from Big Bear, California, said this week as he assessed the effect of making the USA Olympic team. "I'm just trying to continue to do what I've been doing in working hard day in and day out, and really looking to the next level and aspiring to winning a medal in Beijing."

Hall led home Dathan Ritzenhein and Brian Sell over the Central Park course in November and onto the US men's marathon squad. Ritzenhein (Eugene, Oregon), 25, also runs in San Diego on Saturday, and he believes his racing in other events will benefit from having already made the team. "I think, more than anything, I feel a lot more relaxed right now," Ritzenhein said. "Usually at this time of year things start getting going and knowing that making the team is already there helps relieve a lot of the pressure. "Usually I really don't enjoy working on the treadmill and things like that, but I've really been able to enjoy that stuff because I'm not really sweating it now because that part is locked in and I can just look forward to doing the best I can (in Beijing) and that's the ultimate goal for the year." Hall said he was in great condition coming into his first cross country race of the winter but Ritzenhein goes to the line following a thigh injury suffered running the world cross country course in Edinburgh last month. "I'm still not 100 per cent yet, but I'm feeling that I'm getting used to getting my feet back on the ground and putting an effort out there. "I know that if I can just get into the race and have everything be feeling good, then I'll be really confident."

In addition to Hall and Ritzenhein, USA Half Marathon champion James Carney (Boulder, Colorado), 2004 Olympian Dan Browne (Portland, Oregon), Olympic steeplechaser Anthony Famiglietti (New York City), and former NCAA Cross Country champions Jorge Torres (Boulder, Colorado) and Josh Rohatinsky (Portland, Oregon) are likely to figure strongly.

Saturday's championships in San Diego will feature six races that will determine national champions for masters men and women; junior men and women; and open men and women. The races have attracted a record of more than 700 entries including six US Olympians and eight former USA Cross Country champions, including Elliot Heath (Winona, Minnesota) and Jordan Hasay (Arroyo Grande, California), the defending champions in the junior men's and women's events. Two-time women's cross country 4km champion Shalane Flanagan of Pittsboro, North Carolina, goes off favorite in this year's 8km women's open race with Katie McGregor