(Sacramento, CA) The Concordia Cardinals distance program had two athletes compete in the inaugural NAIA Marathon Classic held by the California International Marathon in Sacramento, California. On Sunday, December 3rd both Micah Bauer (Freshman; Traverse City, MI) and Ryan Exell (Grad; Canton, MI) competed along with 65 other male runners in the CIM. Bauer and Exell each ended up finishing in the top eight spots and earned an All-American finish.
Bauer started his race off quick, by attacking the first five kilometers in 16:35 and took the race lead. He would continue running with a fellow NAIA competitor through the 10-kilometer mark, which they crossed in 33:01. Bauer made the choice to pull back after the 10k, as he fell into the second-place position and crossed through 15k in 50:00. That is where he found himself at half way as well. Bauer crossed the half marathon mark with a time of 1:10:58. As he closed in on the 25k and 30k mark, he started to feel the pain that comes with a marathon and especially a quick start. By the time he hit the 35k mark he slipped to third with about 4.5 miles left. He stayed strong enough to hold onto fifth place with a finishing time of 2:28:26, which also gives him the school record in the Marathon.
Exell ran a completely different race, as he started more conservative. Exell stuck to his game plan from the start of the gun, but found himself around mid-pack through the early part of the race. When he crossed the 5k mark, he was 26th with a split of 18:34. By the time he hit the 10k mark, he was 28th and at halfway he was 29th with a time of 1:18:13. However, there was no panic as he decided to go to work. In the next two and a half miles, he passed 8 NAIA athletes. He passed another 4 over the next 5k and by the time they roughly got to mile 21, he was 9th. Over the next five miles, Exell found the final athlete he needed to climb 21 positions to secure the final All-American position. He finished with a final time of 2:34:24.
"I am so proud of these two!" said head coach Dominic Santina. "We came in with the big goal being for both of them to place top eight, but to actually have it happen today is amazing! They both did it in their own ways too, Micah learned a little bit of a lesson early on, but I had hope and some confidence based on his long-distance running history he could dig deep and hang on."
"I was slightly concerned for Ryan early, since he was so deep in the field. I knew he was doing what we had discussed but figured it might not have been enough. What he did in the second half of the race was incredible, and showed he ran a lot smarter than some of the other athletes and had a drive and desire to get that final All-American spot. It's a lot easier late in a race, when you are blowing by people then when getting passed and as the race got to its tough points, he was picking off people and putting them behind him. I knew both of these guys were talented, but they still had to go perform and they did exactly that," said Coach Dominic Santina about his thoughts on the races for both Bauer and Exell. He also was very optimistic about what this could mean going forward.
"This is a huge day for Concordia and for our Cross Country and distance program. We not only put a lot of the NAIA on notice of what we can do, I think this opened a lot of eyes for recruits and potential athletes down the road. Not only the opportunity to go compete in the Marathon, but to see this success on top of what the guys did in cross country and how our team is growing. It was a big fall for us and this just capped it off."
The fall semester now comes to an end for competition for cross country and distance athletes, as they will focus on the end of the semester and the holiday break. The team will take a break from competition until January 12 where the Indoor Track season will start up at Saginaw Valley State University.
