WATCH LIVE ON MILESPLIT!
While we have to wait a week for the outdoor season to start on Pennsylvania soil, one big name will be making the trip down south to open up his spring season. Fresh off a stellar meet at New Balance Nationals Indoor, Carlisle's Noah Affolder will race some of the nation's top distance runners at Saturday's Texas Distance Festival in Southlake, Texas.
Saturday's premiere event is the 5,000 meters, which Affolder is entered in. The field is jam-packed with Foot Locker finalists and we're expecting a super fast race.
Among the entries are Foot Locker champion Reed Brown of Texas, Nebraska state champion Seth Hirsch, California state champion Cooper Teare, North Carolina state champ Connor Lane. The pace figures to be fast and we should see some quick times out of this group.
Affolder enters with a 5K PR of 14:47 from this past cross country season. This will be his first career 5K on the track. The senior won the PIAA Class AAA state championship in cross country and the Foot Locker Northeast Regional. He went on to take sixth at Foot Locker Nationals before winning the Great Edinburgh XCountry Challenge, a 6K race in Scotland.
This winter, Affolder had a huge indoor season, which included a state record and Millrose win in the mile (4:07.24), a state record and second place finish at NBNI in the 2 mile (8:46.08), and he was part of two US#1 relays, the DMR (a national record time of 9:56.18) and the 4x800 (7:45.86).
The meet starts at 5:30 EST with a rolling schedule. The boys' 5K will be the final event of the night. Could we see a sub-14 performance? Some of the big names talked to MileSplit entering Saturday's race about the pressure of competing against top talent.
The meet will be streamed live on MileSplit. Watch it HERE.
