The ISU men’s track and field team will split up this weekend as the distance runners will travel to Palo Alto, Calif., to run at the Stanford Invitational. The rest of the team will travel to Tempe, Ariz., for the second time this season for the Sun Angel Classic.

ISU runners will participate in distance events such as the 800-, 1,500-, 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs.

Coach Corey Ihmels said the distance group’s trip to the Stanford Invitational is always one of the fun trips.

“It’s a great area of the country,” Ihmels said. “I told the kids today: The atmosphere is going to be tremendous, the weather is going to be great, and there is no reason that everyone doesn’t come back with a new [personal record].”

Redshirt freshman Alex Dillenbeck, who will be running the 1,500-meter run at Stanford, said he is excited to get outdoors and face good competition after not being satisfied with the way he ended the indoor season.

“It’s gotten me kind of fired up,” Dillenbeck said. “I’ve wanted to hit training pretty hard the last couple weeks, and it’s pretty exciting to [now be able to] go out and see what I can do. The heats should be good and the races should be good, so I’m excited to see what everybody can do and where everybody is at.”

Ihmels also said the Stanford Invitational is one of the best distance meets in the country, so his kids will face good competition there.

“Everyone is going to be challenged,” Ihmels said. “Every single one of them will be challenged in some form or fashion. They are not going to have any excuses when they walk away. Either you run fast or you don’t.”

Dillenbeck said he has a general time he wants to try to achieve in his race, but he will stick with his usual race style: going out and being aggressive.

“In high school, I would worry about time, and it kind of affected my races,” Dillenbeck said. “Since I’ve been in college, I’ve focused more on just getting in position and staying aggressive through the race because as long as you do that, the race is going to go fast enough where you are going to hit the time that you want. [You just have to] get in there and stay competitive.”

Ihmels said with the long gap since the last competition for some of the runners, this meet may just be an opportunity to see where they were at in training. He also said some of the runners may surprise themselves how well they perform against stiff competition.

Both competitions will begin on Friday and conclude on Saturday.