Coming off a big meet at Memphis last weekend, the Panthers will have to try to recreate the intensity again this weekend for Bradley Invitational.

Eastern head coach Geoff Masanet said with the weekend being so long, he thinks the team is really tired – but he doesn’t want that to slow them down.

“Coach stressed Memphis a lot, and I know he has been kind of worried about us falling back a little because we are tired, but we just need to go out and race hard to get ready for conference,” sophomore Eric Pedersen said.

This is the Panthers last regular season meet. They will have a week off before traveling to Birmingham, Ala., for the Ohio Valley Conference Meet.

Sophomore Erin O’Grady said even though everyone may be a little bit strained from last weekend, she thinks that everyone will show up to race because it is their last chance to get some practice.

The women will have to make the jump from a 5,000-meter race to running a 6,000-meter race this weekend, but the men will stay at 8,000-meter until OVCs, where they run a 10,000-meter.

“It is going to be a little different, especially for the freshman, but, basically, we told everyone to just go out there and treat it like a 5K,” O’Grady said. “We just ran against close to 400 people, so this one is going to be more spread out – and it should be a little easier to race.”

O’Grady said they are running on a golf course, which is like Memphis in that it is relatively flat, but it does have some small hills.

“The entire course is winding back and forth and up and down a bunch of slight inclines, either a little uphill or slightly downhill,” O’Grady said. “You just have to watch your pace on the uphill, make sure you are staying strong, and then let go a little on the downhill.”

The course at Bradley is also the NCAA Cross Country Midwest Regional course this year, and so the Panthers, along with other schools, are excited to get the chance to race on it prior to Regionals.

“There is going to be a lot of good local teams there because everyone wants to try out the course,” Pedersen said. “So the competition level is going up a bit. We ran with a lot of guys last weekend, but now we are going to be running with some high quality guys.”

Masanet said Drake, St. Louis, Northern Iowa, Western Illinois, Illinois State and Loyola (Chicago) would be attending, as well as conference rival Southeast Missouri, among other schools.

“It is going to be exciting to see them before conference and test to where we compare to them,” red-shirt freshman Mario Castrejon said. “If we run a good race, we should be able to give them a good run for their money.”

Masanet said the teams that are going look pretty evenly matched, and that should make for a close competition.

“There are a lot of teams from the immediate area and a lot of them are pretty solid teams, so we are going to have to race well,” Masanet said. “It is going to be a long day for a team that doesn’t show up to race because of all the parity.”