Juneau college runners storm first Alaska meet
- Klas Stolpe
- 14 hours ago
- 6 min read
Harriers discuss summer training miles and styles
By Klas Stolpe
Juneau Independent
The state college derby of running between the University of Alaska Anchorage Seawolves and University of Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday featured an assortment of Juneau runners among the field.
Edgar Vera Alverado, a 2024 Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé graduate and current sophomore for UAA, ran unattached and placed seventh in the men’s 8-kilometer race with a time of 24 minutes 43 seconds.
“I felt great,” Vera Alverado said. “Awesome to be competing again, definitely a rust buster, but I’m excited to see what this season brings.”
UAA senior John Peckham, from Sisters, Oregon, won the men’s race in 23:34.
UAF freshman Nick Iverson, a 2025 JDHS graduate, placed 11th in 24:58.
“I feel pretty great about the run, actually,” Iverson said. “Going into the race I didn’t have any expectations or pressure or anything of the sort, so I was mainly just excited to race with a new team in a new place. I felt pretty good during the race as well, and even though this is a big jump from a 5K like we would do in high school, I still had a really good time out there.”
Iverson took a two-week break after the high school track season ended earlier this year.
“I just started following the summer training plan my coach gave me,” he said. “It wasn’t anything crazy intense, especially towards the beginning of the summer, but definitely got me in good shape as it racked up my mileage more than I’ve ever been to before. He mostly gave the runs in minutes, but for reference I ended up building up to around 50 miles a week.”
UAF senior Finn Morley, a 2021 JDHS graduate, placed 15th in 25:24.
“I did doubles during the summer,” Morley said. “But instead of running in the morning, I would ski (roller ski) for an hour so I’m getting no impact on my legs, but I’m getting aerobic effort. We didn’t really train miles per week, we did hours. Maybe 11- to 14-hours per.”
Morley noted the difference between high school running and college.
“I feel like the 8K is so much different than the 5K,” he said. “I mean, I ran a 16.20 in high school, which is pretty good, and then I got to college and there are guys who were running way slower than me in high school who just destroyed me in the 8K. It's hard to put my finger on why it's so much different. You're racing in college and there's like so much more going on in the race. It's more tactical and intense. And also college is hard, too, because of school and then you're working out for three hours a day or whatever in the team room. It's just a lot to balance. I think the balancing is the hard part.”
UAF freshman Sage Janes, a 2025 JDHS graduate, placed 20th in 26:24, and UAF graduate student Clem Taylor-Roth, a 2019 JDHS graduate, placed 27th in 27:20.
UAF freshmen Jonathyn Kestel and Owen Woodruff, 2025 JDHS graduates, did not race.
“I was following my coaches’ training for most of the summer,” Vera Alverado said. “I started two weeks after my track season ending, slowly working my way up to 70 miles a week with slow mileage for the first month, as well as some biking for cross-training, and lifting to stay healthy. Then the second month, I really focus on enjoying myself and trying to make July a consistent and quality month of work before I came to school. I started doing workouts the second week of July. Focusing on working on my base fitness and strength so by the time I got to Anchorage I could focus less on getting in shape but more on absorbing the work and trying to stay healthy.”
UAF sophomore Jasmin Holst, a 2021 JDHS graduate, placed 16th in the women’s 6-kilometer race with a time of 26:25, and UAF sophomore Ava Newell, a 2024 JDHS graduate, placed 18th in 26:41.
The winning women’s time was UAF women’s skiing redshirt senior Rosie Fordham, from Sydney, Australia, in 20:47. Fordham ran for the cross-country team as a senior last season, exhausting her eligibility, and ran unattached for this race. UAA junior Alexandra Otto, from Germany, placed second in 21:30.
UAA junior Avery Williamson, a 2023 Haines graduate, placed fifth in 22:38. UAF freshman Camelia Bell, a 2025 Haines graduate, placed 19th in 27:26, and UAF freshman Lydia Andriesen, a 2021 Haines graduate, placed 20th in 28:43. UAA freshman Marina Dill, a 2025 Sitka graduate, did not race.
The UAA women were given a No. 2 preseason ranking in the NCAA Division II Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC), and the men were ranked third. The UAF women were ranked fourth and the men seventh.
Ida Meyer, a 2025 JDHS graduate, and 2025 Sitka graduate Clare Mullin began their college cross-country careers at NCAA DI Gonzaga University last week. Mullin ran a 14:23 to place fourth in the 4K women’s race at the Clash of Inland Northwest in Cheney, Washington, as the Bulldogs swept the top five finishes. The winning time was Gonzaga senior Willow Collins in 13:48. Also on the roster is senior Tawny Smith, a 2022 Sitka graduate. Smith placed 15th in 14:58.
Whitworth sophomore Annika Schwartz, a 2023 JDHS graduate, placed 67th in 17:42. Meyer did not race.
“We have a few coming up in October,” Meyer said. “I’m definitely getting used to training at this level. It’s been a great experience so far. The team is really welcoming and helpful throughout the motions of training and building up as a team...Over the summer I had comfortably hard workouts, some tempo and lactic threshold paces, and a long run every week. Three to four workouts a week. I was hitting a mile-per-week goal of 38 miles. Just paying attention to my body. If I didn’t hit that mileage it was okay as long as the effort was there. I had a whole personalized and scheduled workout plan from the coaches. Staying in shape was the priority in building fitness.”
The men’s winner of the 6K race was Gonzaga junior Mason Kissell in 18:45. Juneau 2025 half marathon winner Jack McManus, a Whitworth junior from Caldwell, Idaho, placed 22nd in 19:17.
“I am usually training 70 to 80 miles a week with one rest day so that's some 13-ish miles a day on average,” McManus said this summer. “Once a week there will be a long run, 18-19 miles long run, and then there will usually be one other day of the week where I do a hard workout at something like seven miles. That's kind of a half marathon-type pace. And then all of the days are just lots of miles of easy running, sometimes some hill repeats here and there, but mostly just lots of volume, lots of time on the feet, and then the real speed work will happen once we get to school in the fall...I generally measure in miles, but it's the amount of volume that you can absorb. So just trying to give the body as much as it can take before it breaks down and then as we get closer to races we transfer that more from the large volume into the faster, shorter stuff.”
• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@gmail.com.
