With the Drake Relays on the horizon, Saturday’s Musco Twilight meet in Iowa City wasn’t the premiere meet of the month in the state of Iowa. However, with a number of athletes coming off injuries and illness and others who are redshirting this outdoor season that got the chance to compete, it was a productive weekend for the ISU men’s and women’s track and field teams.

Highlighting competition for the Cyclones at the Francis X. Cretzmyer Track, was junior sprinter Ian Warner and senior thrower Britta Christofferson. Warner took first place in the 100-meter dash while Christofferson returned to competition after breaking the school record in early April to win the hammer throw event.

Warner, a Markham, Ontario native, suffered a season-ending hamstring injury at the 2010 Big 12 Indoor Championships in a preliminary heat of the 60-meter dash that disabled him from running during last year’s outdoor season. Warner returned to the track this indoor season to finish ninth in the 60-meter dash and 12th in the 200-meter dash at the Big 12 Indoor Championships.

“He’s running healthy, he’s running fast, not ideal conditions [at the Musco Twilight] but I told him when it’s not conditions for a personal best, it’s always a chance to compete and he went out and did that,” said sprints and hurdles coach Nate Wiens.

Also running in the sprints this weekend was junior Kianna Elahi who entered the weekend ranked eighth nationally in the 400-meter hurdles, but instead ran the 200 and 400 meter races.

“I wanted to see where her speed was at, she’s never run a 200 for me before and runs sparingly at the open 400 but it was a good time for her to go out, relax a little bit and go out and see what she could do,” Wiens said.

Elahi finished second in both events and set a new personal best time in the 400-meter run with a time of 54.23 seconds.

In addition to Christofferson’s win in the hammer throw, the men’s and women’s throwers notched four top-five finishes in Saturday’s meet.

“Our throwers had a tremendous day up and down the lineup, they did a really nice job,” said coach Corey Ihmels.

Unfortunately for the team this season, three of those additional top-five finishers-junior Danielle Frere, sophomore Hayli Bozarth and junior Zack Richards — are all redshirting this outdoor season. That means a thrower like Frere, who competed unattached and won the shot put at the Musco Twilight, will be unable to score points for the Cyclones at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships.

“It’s kind of hard to watch what they’re doing this year,” Ihmels said. “Short-term it’s not a lot of a fun because you’re sitting there watching them perform so well when they’re not in our uniform but it’s going to pay huge dividends over the next couple years.”

The Musco Twilight was highlighted by the illuminated evening competition but now both the men’s and women’s teams will turn their focus to the Blue Oval as they prepare to compete this weekend at the 102nd annual Drake Relays at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.

“We didn’t bring a huge group but the ones that we did I thought got some good tune-ups in before Drake this weekend,” Ihmels said.

ISU runners will first hit the track Thursday with the women’s 4×1600-meter relay at 4:40 p.m. and then in both the men’s and women’s 5,000 and 10,000-meter runs which will begin at 7:30 p.m. as part of the event’s Distance Carnival.