Athletes hate to rely on luck, but for both the ISU men’s and women’s cross country teams, luck was definitely not on their side at the NCAA Pre-Nationals meet Oct. 18 in Waterloo. Both squads will try to erase those memories before the Big 12 Conference meet Friday in Austin, Texas.

Both squads turned in decidedly subpar performances at the Pre-Nationals meet, showings that were a combination of poor performance and illness in key areas.

Iowa State was coming off a solid performance at the ISU Memorial, held Oct. 3, and was looking to ride its momentum through pre-nationals.

Four Cyclone men and two women had recorded top-10 finishes at the Memorial. Sophomore Dan Taylor led the Cyclones with a third-place finish in the 8-kilometer run while juniors Craig Cartier (fourth), Ryan Pence (eighth) and senior Chris Francois (10th) turned in strong showings.

On the women’s side at that same meet, senior Jessica Huff had placed second for Iowa State in the 6-kilometer run while junior Monica Erickson recorded an eighth-place showing.

Illness struck the women’s team at the Waterloo meet, as three of the top four performers coming into the race were nowhere near 100 percent physically.

Jessica Huff and Monica Erickson were unable to compete at all for the Cyclones due to illness.

“We went into the meet knowing that our first two runners from the previous race weren’t going to run,” said women’s head coach Dick Lee. “Lindsey Nye, who has been running in our top four all season, had been sick during the week but had kept it to herself and wasn’t able to complete the race.

“Effectively, we were running without three of our top four kids on the team. There aren’t many teams in the country who want to do that.”

With some time to rest after the meet, the women’s squad is slowly regaining strength.

“Hopefully, we’ll have all three kids back racing [in time for the conference meet],” Lee said. “At the end of last week, two were doing much better and a third was not in racing shape.

“If we were playing a sport where you could play a few plays and take a rest, then play a few plays and have someone sub in for you, they could have performed. It would be like asking someone to go in and play every down in a football game for us when we go race.”

While the women were the harder hit of the two teams, some of the Cyclone men were a bit under the weather also.

But that is no excuse, said men’s coach Corey Ihmels.

“We can blame it on the weather, we can blame it on a lot of things,” Ihmels said. “That’s reality, people do get sick more this time of year but you have to take care of yourself.

“Those things are going to happen, and sometimes you can’t avoid them. That’s athletics, and that’s life and you have to move on. It happens to the best of us, and its one thing we have to deal with.

“There was no excuse for the way the guys ran and they know it.”

Francois was the top finisher for the Cyclone men, recording a time of 25:20, good for 129th place out of 245 runners.

“The results don’t lie, we really struggled,” Ihmels said. “We had a few guys who were a little sick going into it — a few guys who weren’t feeling quite right. In a big race like that if you’re not running on all cylinders, feeling good and ready to race and ready to compete it gets ugly really quick and that’s what happened to us.”

Along with his third place finish in the ISU Memorial, Taylor had racked up solid finishes leading up to the race. A fourth-place at the ISU Open and a 49th placing at the 30-team Roy Griak Invitational left the Cyclone runner ready for more.

Taylor finished third for the Cyclones at the pre-meet — 219th overall — with a time of 26:28.

“Dan’s been one of our leaders all year long,” Ihmels said. “He had a rough week leading up to [the meet] and a rough race. You go as your leader goes and he didn’t have a good run. Everyone struggled and followed suit.

“It’s like falling off a horse and getting back on — they have to get back on the horse this weekend and get out and be competitive. We struggled but that shouldn’t define our season and we want to move on.”

On the women’s side, freshman Krysta Metz was the top Cyclone finisher, placing 159th with a time of 23:04. Jenny Mockler (23:26) and Karen McCormick (23:44) finished second and third, respectively, for Iowa State.

“I don’t think anyone ran a performance like they thought they were capable of,” Lee said. “[The course] is one where you expect to go in and run 30 seconds to one minute faster than you run other courses, because its just a fast course and it’s set up to run fast. With the competition you expect the times to be fast and sometimes you can put too much pressure on yourself.”

Both teams have come back and have been working hard in practice to prepare themselves for the Big 12 Conference meet Friday.

“There’s no magic routine, if there was we’d be doing it and so would everyone else,” Ihmels said. “It’s tough to walk away from a meet like that and turn around and feel good about the season.

“We’re a young program and we’re going to have those times, I just need some guys to step up and do what they’re capable of doing. It has to be a team effort and we’re at a better point than we were a week ago.”