Ill Wind Pushes Reed, Mosqueda to Victories

Sylvia Mosqueda and Bo Reed probably should have been home in bed.

Instead, they gritted through sickness and left a talented field of healthy runners behind in Saturday’s Aztec Invitational Cross-Country Race at Morley Field in Balboa Park.

Under skies showing no traces of blue, Mosqueda took an early lead and finished the hilly 5,000-meter women’s course in 16 minutes 44 seconds, comfortably ahead of second-place Carol Keller (16:53).

Reed ran a slightly different in the men’s 8,000, holding back at the start to size up the pack before exploding to the front for an easy victory in 24:44. His Northern Arizona University teammate Milfred Tewawina was second in 24:58, and New Mexico’s Bill Mangan (25:05) was third.

Team honors in the women’s invitational went to UCLA, as expected. Bruin runners were fifth, 10th, 15th, 18th and 25th for a score of 73. Northern Arizona was first in the men’s division with 38 points, placing four runners in the top 10. San Diego State’s women finished eighth, the Aztec men 10th.

But try to figure Mosqueda and Reed. Here were two sick runners who really didn’t feel like finishing their races but beat everyone anyway. After the first 1,000 meters or so, both would have preferred to grab a seat and watch. Mosqueda said she has had headaches the past two nights and hasn’t gotten much sleep. Reed is just getting over the flu.

“I felt horrible when I got here,” Mosqueda said. “At the beginning of the race, I had a really bad headache and I still have it. After the first mile I wanted to stop.”

And because this was a race she said she was only running for fun, it would have been easy to quit. But she decided to test her pain threshold and found she had just enough tolerance to win. No kick, just tolerance.

“I didn’t have any kick coming in,” she said. “I just struggled the whole race.”

Reed didn’t feel any better. “I was hurting,” he said. “It was a real mental race for me because I kept wanting to give up.”

His teammates helped, yelling encouragement throughout the race.

“So I knew I couldn’t give up,” he said.

Northern Arizona Coach Ron Mann gave Reed high marks for effort. Particularly, given the circumstances.

“I think this was one of his better races for being sick,” he said.

That was kind of the theme of this invitational. UCLA Coach Bob Messina confirmed several of his Bruin runners also had colds.

Notes

San Diego State’s B team took first place in the women’s small college/junior college 5,000; Point Loma Nazarene was second; University of San Diego was third. Point Loma’s Eva Lindblad won the race in 19:45, San Diego State’s Jennifer Nanista (20:01) was second and Point Loma’s Tonya Russell (20:29) was third. . . In the men’s small college/junior college 5,000, the University of San Diego won the team competition. U.S. International University was second, and UC San Diego was third. Mario Madrigal of Long Beach Community College won in 15:40, and Ellis Del Sol (15:47) of USIU was second.