(Photo by Cedric Gillette)
Caitlin Collier arrived in St. Louis on the eve of the Festival of Miles, checked into her hotel, and headed to the track to put in some 50's before race day. The Bolles standout who just finished up her junior year is the ideal blend of speed and endurance. Collier recently pulled off the trifecta at the state meet winning the 800, 1,600 and 3,200m. Coach Dan Dearing told us the opportunity to run in this race was just too good to pass up.
"There are very few high schooler's in the country that can drag her around to a fast time," he said. "This race has been on our calendar since before the season and has been a focus of our training, so hopefully she is ready to fun."
Collier split 2:03.1 as a member of the Bulldogs 4x800m relay team at Florida Relays and has a personal best of 2:04.89 as just a sophomore at the USATF Junior Nationals last year. Dearing adds that the goal is for her to get a new PR and set the Florida record.
"The record is 2:04.6 by Robin Campbell of Oak Hall at the Florida Relays in 1976," he told us. " She missed that last year by 0.2" last year. We'll see how it goes. Practices have been good."
The rising senior has a US#2 2:05.29 this season, only behind Sammy Watson of NY who went 2:01.47 at last weekend's Prefontaine Classic. The pacer is set to take the field through 400m in 59 second in hopes of achieving the USATF "A" standard of 2:02. Four girls in the field have run under 2:04 including two-time runner-up Lauren Wallace of NorCal Distance project who has a best from 2015 of 2:00.48.
"We did not back off her mileage going into the state meet," Dearing said. " We like to do the race quality effort workout five or six days out from a big meet. We had a very good race quality effort on Saturday. She did 3x500 at race pace ran them all around 76s."
