With only two weeks standing in the way of the outdoor track season, the ISU women’s track team is preparing not only for nationals, but the future season as well.

Three runners from the ISU women’s track team will be competing this weekend in Boise, Idaho, at the NCAA Indoor Championships. For those runners, practice will be a little different this week.

“We’ll work out [Tuesday] morning and then we leave [Tuesday] afternoon,” said coach Corey Ihmels. “[It’s] kind of a short week for us here, but we’ll get there and have a good practice Wednesday and Thursday and then they’re racing Friday.”

One of the runners heading to nationals, junior Meaghan Nelson, said practice will be kept simple and relaxed this week.

“We’re keeping the beginning of practice normal,” Nelson said. “[Tuesday] is our normal pre-meet workout and we’ll probably cut back Wednesday and Thursday, but not too much.”

For the rest of the runners, it’s the “back to basics” theme the team has been running with this season.

“The rest of the group is just doing a weekly mileage right now,” Ihmels said. “They’re building their aerobic base back up and just getting ready to go back to work.”

Ihmels said because of all the races toward the end of the outdoor season, the mileage dips down a little bit. But with a short break before outdoors start, athletes have a chance to build back up.

Junior Dani Stack said she has had an up-and-down indoor season so far while battling minor injuries and illnesses. She said it has affected her, but she isn’t making excuses.

“It’s been a rocky couple of weeks, I’m not going to lie,” Stack said. “It definitely has affected my performance and just my confidence. But I’m not looking down on myself and reducing my expectations.”

After this weekend, race action won’t pick back up until March 23, when the team heads down to Arizona for the ASU Invite.

“We’re going to have a down week of just running and workouts, then we’ll bump right into it and get ready for Stanford,” Nelson said.