Occidental’s Beltran Downshifts, Takes 4th at UC Riverside

Marcial Beltran tried a change of pace Saturday.

The Occidental College cross-country runner took a more relaxed approach while running in the UC Riverside Invitational in Riverside and the result was an impressive fourth-place finish.

Beltran, who grabbed the lead midway through the race in the Fresno Invitational two weeks ago but faded to ninth, stayed off the pace Saturday before moving into a lead pack of eight by the third mile. The group was whittled to five by the fourth mile before Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Scott Hempel, UC Riverside’s Shannon Winkelman and USC’s Mitchell Sloan broke away.

Hempel won the 8,000-meter (4.96 miles) race in 25 minutes 21 seconds, followed by Winkelman (25:29) and Sloan (25:31).

Beltran finished in 25:36, four seconds ahead of the Jamal Toads Club’s Danny Martinez.

“I started in the middle instead of trying to put an all-out effort today and win,” said Beltran, a junior transfer from Fullerton College who holds the national junior college record in the marathon (2:17:26).

“I started to move a little bit at a time and I felt stronger (than at Fresno) at the end and didn’t burn out. I’m still learning to run a five-mile race (a mile longer than a junior college race).”

Emmet Hogan (13th), Jose Garcia (17th), Konstantine Kindreich (30th) and Mike Anker (64th) rounded out Occidental’s scoring as the Tigers placed fourth with 128 points in the team competition.

San Luis Obispo won with 69 points, 14 ahead of the Jamal Toads. Arizona State was third with 122 and Cal State Fullerton was fifth with 155.

Occidental’s Laurie Schuster, the defending Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference champion, placed eighth in the women’s 5,000-meter race (18:23) and teammate Becky Kopchik was 22nd (18:45), helping lift the Tigers to fifth place in the women’s standings with 233 points.

“I wanted to go out fast and I was among the top 20 throughout the race,” said Schuster, “but I was hoping to run in the 17s.”

Patti Blunk, competing unattached, won the race in 17:48. Arizona State won the team title with 71 points, followed by San Luis Obispo (91), UC Irvine (124) and UCLA (156).

Former Valley College standout Gretchen Lohr-Cruz finished 12th in 18:26. Northridge held out its top two runners, Darcy Arreola and Derik Vett.

Laura Doering and Martha Segura were Northridge’s top finishers, placing 40th and 48th, for the eighth-place Matadors. Northridge’s Fernando Fernandez finished 78th in the men’s race as Northridge placed 16th.