One more meet, two more weeks — then it’s time for the Big 12 Outdoor Championship.

The ISU men’s track and field team will split in two and send runners to Palo Alto, Calif., and Iowa City for one more tune up before the big meet in a couple of weeks. And for some of the runners, this weekend will provide extra respite to compliment the upcoming off-week.

But for the weekend at hand for the Cyclones, the runners are looking to make one last hurrah to see where they are with their times.

“[This weekend] is going to be a very good gauge,” said distance runner Brandon Barnes, who will be making the trip to the Payton Jordan Invitational in Palo Alto. “There is going to be a lot of good competition out there. A lot of the runners are going to run fast, so it’s good to see how you do when you go fast. It’s good to see where you are at for confidence and where you sit in [the] conference.”

The Drake Relays provided Iowa State with an inside look at where it was with its pace for events. The team wasn’t happy with the result, but there are more races to be run.

Whatever happens, this weekend will help the Cyclones dictate where the training goes for the last two weeks.

“This weekend will be big,” Barnes said. “We’ll come back and get a good week of training in, but nothing that crazy. ‘The haze in the barn,’ as the coach likes to say. You have to do the small stuff. And then conference week we will settle down and get ready for the weekend.”

Redshirt senior Cameron Ostrowski — who had a rough weekend in the high jump at the Drake Relays, jumping 6 feet, 7 ¾ inches — will spend the weekend resting his rehabbing ankle that has hampered him throughout this outdoor season. After his impressive performance at the Big 12 Indoor Championship, his ankle has held him to under seven feet for the entire outdoor season.

These last two weeks for Ostrowski, one of the favorites on the team to make an NCAA Outdoor Championship appearance, will be of the utmost importance in his quest to prepare for his jumps at the Big 12s.

“I’m going to take this weekend off and try to rehabilitate,” Ostrowski said. “I just need to get healthy for the Big 12s and Regionals. It would be nice to get more reps, but with my ankle, it limits what I can do. It’s a bit concerning with Big 12s around the corner and it makes it hard to tell where I am for my pace.”

The Big 12 Outdoor Championship is the meet all of the athletes have been training for this entire outdoor season. It’s just one more final stretch — one final push to the finish.

“Looking at the times that we have put up, I think we are all excited for what we can do,” said distance runner Matt Bevil, who will go to Iowa City this weekend. “We are building off week to week and being more excited the closer we get to Big 12s.”

The Payton Jordan Invitational will take place May 1 and 2 at Stanford. Other runners will compete in the Musco Twilight Invitational on May 2.