A handful of members of the ISU women’s track and field team will compete this weekend in different parts of the country. The distance runners will travel to Palo Alto, Calif., for the Stanford Invitational, while the throwers head to Columbia, Mo., for the Missouri Relays.

Splitting up the team and sending them to two different meets is not uncommon for teams during the outdoor season. Coaches like to send their athletes to the meet that will provide them the best opportunity to run to their fastest and fullest potential.

Going to Stanford will be Lisa Koll, Jenny Mockler, Paige Ties and Meredith McKean. Mockler will compete in the 1,500-meter run and the other three will tackle the 5,000. Mockler is upping the distance from her previous meet where she ran the 800 and finished third. Koll will be running for the first time this outdoor season and hopes to carry momentum from an appearance at the national meet for indoors in the 5,000.

Although only a small number of teammates are running this weekend, that doesn’t mean it will be an easy week for the others. This week will be used as an important week for solid training in preparation for the Texas Relays, a very competitive meet.

“This is a week to get a good solid week of training in,” said coach Dick Lee.

Assistant coach Scott Roberts will use this week as a training week for his sprinters and hurdlers.

“We are going to stay here and train,” Roberts said.

The week will also be used to let some runners heal up, including freshman hurdle standout Jenna Caffrey. Caffrey suffered a mild injury at the Walt Disney World Invitational, and was held out of the finals of the 100 hurdles, but did run on the school-record 100 shuttle hurdle relay team.