ACXC 2019: Senior men’s preview

The Athletics Canada National Cross-Country Championships are this Saturday in Abbotsford B.C. The senior men’s race is a fun mix of former champions, new runners on the scene and a few people who haven’t raced a national championship in some time.

RELATED: ACXC 2019: Senior women’s preview

Top five predicted finishers

Luc Bruchet
Jean-Simon Desgagnes
Jon Gay
Ben Preisner
Connor Black

Race time

The senior men’s race goes at 2:45 p.m. PDT on Saturday.

Blasts from the past

These are the men we haven’t seen on the cross course for a number of years. Rob Watson is still a very frequent road racer (and has even appeared in some trail races), but when it comes to a national championship, he hasn’t laced up the XC spikes in six years. Watson’s running in support of his Mile2Marathon team. Declan White is another name that’s been missing from the scene for the past few years. The former Trinity Western Spartan was dominant at the U Sports (then CIS) level, finishing second at the national championship in 2016.

Half-marathon heroes

These are road guys who are jumping onto the cross-country course after really impressive fall races.

Benjamin Preisner ran his first half-marathon this fall at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, shocking spectators as “Ben from Canada” ran with the elite men for their first 21.1K. His debut of 1:03:08 is pretty impressive. We’ll see on Saturday if it translates to the cross-country course. Chris Balestrini also ran a debut at STWM, but his was in the marathon. The runner finished in 2:19:40, and he’s moving down to 10K cross this Saturday. Phil Parrot-Migas is the third member of the road contingent, running a half-marathon this fall in 1:05:46. Several members of Parrot-Migas’s training group are in the race, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare as a group.

Trackies

The category for track guys who love cross-country.

Mike Tate, who trains out of Guelph, was a member of the 2019 Canadian cross-country team who represented Canada in Aarhus, Denmark. He’s a 5,000m runner on the track who loves the grit of the cross course. Connor Black who now trains out of London, Ont. was the 2018 U Sports Cross-Country champion. The former Guelph Gryphon is in his first year as a post-collegiate runner and looking to impress in Abbotsford.

John Gay, a Vancouver native, is a steeplechaser who had a breakout 2019 season, making his first senior World Championships on the track. He ran a steeplechase personal best of 8:28.96 in Belgium this past summer, the time that qualified him for the championship.

Luc Bruchet is our final track-guy-who-loves-cross. He’s the defending champion and a Vancouver native who knows the Abbotsford conditions and course well. He’s certainly someone to watch on Saturday.

Next Gen

These are the U Sports athletes who, despite completing long seasons, are runners to watch this Saturday.

The Ubene brothers, Evan and Mitch, ran very impressive races two weeks ago at the U Sports Championships. Evan, who runs for McMaster, helped his team to second place two weeks ago in Kingston, and Mitch came away with an individual second-place medal. Jean-Simon Desgagnes, the Laval runner, was a favourite to win U Sports two weeks ago, but came away 18th–he’ll certainly be looking for redemption on Saturday.

Full entries can be found here.