The Women's Volleyball Race

TigerBlog was 6.2 miles into his bike ride early yesterday morning when he had the kind of thought that only someone who works in athletic communications would have.

How long had he been riding? And, since 6.2 miles would be 10,000 meters, how would that time have done at the Ivy League Heptagonal championships?

He checked his odometer, which shows elapsed time, distance, total distance traveled since he put the odometer on (he's at 1,100 miles since July 1) and time of day. He saw that he'd gone 10,000 meters in 27 minutes.

When he got off his bike, he looked it up. The Ivy League men's 10,000 meter champion finished the race in 32:06.67. That was Brian Zabilski of Columbia.

Princeton's Conor Lundy was second, in 32:06.93, which was .26 behind Zabilski. The time difference between first and second in the 100 meter dash was .13, or half of that.

In the 400, it was more than a full second (1.08 to be exact).

That was one close 10,000 meter run - and TB beat them both by five full minutes. Forget the fact that he was on a bike.

There are times when TB has to stop and remember that as fast as he thinks he's going when he rides, there are people who can run equally as fast, or faster. He has averaged under a four-minute mile for a ride of 11.5 miles. One of these days he'll see how long it takes him to do 26.2 miles. 

Speaking of distance running, the Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championships are a week from Friday, at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City. It is one of TB's favorite annual events on the Ivy League calendar.

His question this year is if he can get from that event, in the late morning/early afternoon, to Ithaca, in time for kickoff for Princeton-Cornell football that night (kickoff at 6).

That game was originally a 7 pm kickoff, but it was moved up an hour for TV (it's on ESPNU). That's good, considering the ride home postgame.

In terms of getting to Heps and then to Ithaca? TB isn't sure on that one.

The Heps cross country event usually crowns the first Ivy League champions of the year, and this year will be no different.

The events of the coming weekend will have a huge impact on the direction of some of the other Ivy races, the ones that go on all fall, not the ones at Van Cortlandt.

For today, TB will focus on one of those races, the one in women's volleyball. This one certainly looks like a three-team race at the midway point of the season.

Princeton, Yale and Cornell are all 6-1, unbeaten against the rest of the league and 1-1 against each other. The fourth place team is Columbia, at 3-4.

Each team has one match this weekend, against its travel partner (Princeton is at Penn Friday at 7), and then three straight weekends of Friday/Saturday before the regular season ends. The head-to-head matchups are:

Princeton at Cornell - Nov. 1 (7, one hour after the football game starts about 100 yards away)
Yale at Cornell - Nov. 8
Princeton at Yale, - Nov. 16 (last day of the regular season)

Those matches will obviously be huge. So will every other one, because any losses along the way will be crucial.

The Ivy League went to a double round-robin format in the 2001 season. Before then, in the single round-robin days, there were two three-way ties, but at 5-2, not at 6-1.

Since 2001, there have been no three-way ties, though in 2004 there was a four-way tie.

What all that means is that in the history of Ivy League women's volleyball, there's never been a year where three teams split with each other and were perfect against everyone else.

At the halfway point this year, that's the case. 

What will the second half bring?