Hardbarger Contiues his Great Season.

Hey guys Casey here... I must admit I feel bad for not giving Micheal Hardbarger more press on this site. It's easy to lose track of some of the WV runners when they go off to out of state schools. And although I know the guy, and where he goes to school, I sometimes forget to look for his name in the results. Luckily there are lot of people on here and the message board that are as big of running nerds as me, and pick up on what I miss. So from now on Micheal is going to be getting the coverage he deserves for running some of the fastest times this year by a WV runner (you can check out the list on the message board). Just to get you up to speed on how well this guys has been doing, lets get a quick review:

In 2007 Cross Country (as a Junior) he was one of the Top Runners for Rochester Tech and ran 25:57 for 8K at the D3 Atlatic Regionals Championship.

In his first indoor race this year he ran 8:42 for the 3K at the Syracuse Invite.

One week later he broke the 4:20 barrier for the mile by running a stellar 4:18.40 at the RIT Invitational putting him near the top of the WV performance list.

He broke a 23 year old school record in the 3K when he ran a smokin' 8:31.39 at the Kane Invitational on Feburary 17th.

This week he broke another school record when he crushed the 1000m and ran 2:28.74 for the win at the Deneault Invitational.

He's also been named Empire 8 Athlete of the Week for the past 2 weeks for his impressive record breaking races.

Now, going into the final few weeks of indoor races Micheal has the NYSCT Conference Championships coming up. He's going to be loaded into a lot individual and relay events hoping to help his team earn the victory. He also hopes to earn a bid to Nationals by running a qualifying time. The provisional time in the mile for D3 is 4:15.7 (on 200m unbanked track, which is what he'll be running at the Conference meet). The Automatic time is 4:10.7 and he has some sub 4:10 guys in his race to pull him along. Let's hope this weekend works out huge for Micheal and he gets a chance to represent his school (and WV) proudly at D3 Nationals. Congrats from us on a great season so far and keep up the hard work!