As the outdoor season progresses for the women’s track-and-field team, coaches and athletes are starting to learn what they need to do in practice in order to progress during meets.

During the weekend, the multi-event athletes traveled out to Arizona for the Jim Click Invitational. Multi-events coach Pete Herber said he knows there is work to be done; now, it’s just a matter of taking care of that work.

“For our next multi-event competition, we’ll be heading out to Mt. SAC,” Herber said. “We need to start executing some things better in competition as well as in practice every day.”

Another thing the multi-event squad learned this past weekend is that they are prone to injury. Multi-event athlete Jordan Andreassen came away from the weekend with a lower calf pain.

“Something happened on her way down the runway to the high jump,” said assistant coach Travis Hartke. “She’s had back problems almost her entire career, but she’s a long ways from where she will be.”

Injuries will just be one of the key components that the multi-event athletes will have to fix and tweak before their next outdoor competition in two weeks.

Overall, the coaches agreed that this weekend was purely a learning experience not only for the athletes that competed for their first time outdoors in Arizona, but for the ones who stayed home as well.

“It’s distance running; it’s one step at a time,” Hartke said. “It’s all about consistency and that’s week in and week out. There’s a progression to it.”

Hartke has talked about how important consistency is all season long. He has said in order to be successful in the meets and to hit the times they want, the runners will have to be consistent throughout the workouts.

Redshirt junior Meaghan Nelson stayed in Ames this weekend with the distance squad solely to work on basic mileage and technique before the first outdoor meet of the season.

“For the first meet, we obviously want to perform at the best of our abilities, but understand that it is the first meet and we want to be running our best times at the end of the season,” Nelson said. “It’s a good starting point to see where we’re at.”

The distance team flies out of Iowa on Wednesday morning to compete in the Stanford Invitational on Friday and Saturday. The rest of the women will head back to Arizona for the third week in a row to compete at the Sun Angel Invitational.