Week 3 meet of the week: Stampede! Abilene, Harding and others tangle in Missouri

There are dozens of teams racing in the Missouri Southern Stampede Saturday. This race will be a great showdown between No. 4 Abilene Christian and No. 11 Harding. Despite some off-the-trail distractions, ACU will be tough, and perhaps too tough for Harding. But the Bison will be led by their outdoor 5k and 10k champ, Daniel Kirwa. And this race could pretty much establish the pecking order in the Southwest Region, with No. 18 (nationally) Southwest Baptist, Pittsburg State (No. 4 Southwest), host Missouri Southern (No. 5 Southwest) and Tarleton State (No. 6 Southwest) in the mix.

But perhaps ACU will be gunning for No. 18 Arkansas. From what I remember of the course and area, this should be a great race. Race time is 9:45 a.m. CDT.

• Corrrection: No. 1 Adams State is at Colorado State. No. 2 Western State and No. 3 Chico State are off.
• No. 5 Grand Valley State takes on unranked (and D1) Michigan State and Saginaw Valley (No. 5 Midwest region) at the Spartans home meet.
• No. 6 Queens races Appalachian State (again) and solid, D1 Ohio State.
• No. 7 Western Washington and No. 15 Alaska-Anchorage take part in No. 24 (D1) Washington's Sundodger Invite.
• No. 8 Colorado Mines treks eastward to Lincoln, Neb. They'll race against D1 schools, like Nebraska, Kansas State and South Dakota, but will be scored separately. Those D1 schools don't wanna get sullied by a tough D2 squad!
• No. 9 Mankato State takes on what has been traditional D3 schools at St. Olaf. Unfortunately, No. 2 (D3) Wisconsin-La Crosse won't be there.
• And No. 10 Edinboro travels to New Yak City and Van Courtland Park, which is near-enough holy ground for cross runners. The Iona Meet of Champions is a deep one, usually featuring lots of D1 talent.

Contour: I'm attempting to get into the spirit of all this running and carrying on. I'll tackle the Mount Helena Classic for the first time, which is 1,300 feet of climbing and descending and 5.6 miles of running. Basically straight up and straight back down. My quads already feel it.

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