After a dominant cross country season, the No. 15 women’s indoor track team’s distance runners have continued to dominate the oval.

The Bombers have an experienced and talented group of distance runners that can compete at any level. It’s this depth that has given the team its strength.

Transitioning from the trails to the track, though, can be tough at times. Going from the cool air of the outdoors to a tight, 200-meter oval inside can either help or hurt athletes. The times are faster, but it is harder to breath in the warmer indoor air.

But the distance squad has shown no ill effects, transitioning well from fall to winter and continuing to improve as the indoor season moves along.  

“It definitely takes a bit of adjusting, as I had never run on an indoor track before,” freshman Jenn Randall said. “Pacing has been a bit of a challenge, though, to have to focus on pacing, whereas in cross country you get pretty familiar with the speed you should be racing at.”

As the indoor track season begins to wind down into the final meets of the season, the distance runners have begun to focus on peaking at the right time. In the month and a half left in the indoor season, the team is looking forward to meets at the conference, state and national level.

So far, Randall and five other members of the distance team, which competes in the 800- to 5,000-meter events, have qualified for the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship meet, which will take place on March 5 and 6.

In the 3,000 and 5,000, sophomore Heidi Baumbach and seniors Amanda Boccio and Melanie McCormick have already qualified for ECACs. Baumbach also never ran indoors in high school, instead choosing to ski during the winter season. She said that the adjustment during her freshman year was a little tough, but now as a sophomore, she is more used to it.

“It wasn’t too bad adjusting to running inside,” she said. “I just thought of it as a new experience with new events to try.”  

Randall — who ran a personal best 5:07 at the New Balance Collegiate Games on Feb. 6 at the Armory Track and Field Center in New York City — has led the way in the mile. Randall has transitioned well to running on the 200-meter oval after leading the women’s cross country team during the fall. This past weekend also marked her first time on a banked track, as all of her previous indoor races had been on flat surfaces.

Randall has the benefit of running alongside the Ithaca record holder in the mile, junior Kate Leugers, who finished the New Balance Mile in 5:09.45. Both Randall and Leugers qualified for the mile at ECACs and were also part of Ithaca’s distance medley relay, which finished eighth in a field of Division I, II and III teams in 12:12.44.

In order to run their fastest at the right time, the Bombers have put in hundreds of miles, starting with the cross country season for many of them, and are now focusing on speed —  getting the fast twitch muscles ready to fire.

As the Bombers run into the postseason, they’ll see if the change in preparation will give them the added speed needed to outkick opponents in the final hundred meters when the season is on the line. Having already done long, tempo-styled workouts, such as 5x1,000-meter repeats, the team will now focus on shorter, quicker intervals.

“We are going to start the good stuff this week — the 400s and 800s at race pace,” Leugers said. “Those are the intervals that really prepare you for the pain you experience in race situations. Not only are you more physiologically ready for races, but when you’re in those late stages of the race, like 1,200 meters into the mile, you have confidence knowing you’ve completed tough workouts at hard paces and you can get through the race.”