University of Minnesota Athletics
Weekend Rewind: Obsa Ali
9/27/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
MINNEAPOLIS (GopherSports.com) - All-Big Ten junior Obsa Ali of the Minnesota men's cross country team made his season debut at the Roy Griak Invitational on Saturday, posting a sixth-place finish with a time of 25:16.5
GopherSports.com caught up with the Richfield, Minn., native to talk about the start of season and what he and the Gophers need to focus on moving forward.
GopherSports.com: You just finished up the Griak Invitational on Saturday with a sixth-place finish. Can you talk about making your season debut at such a big meet?
Obsa Ali: The plan was to just go out there and see what my training was like…just to see where we are and how training is going. The plan was just to go as conservative as possible and move our way through each kilometer. That's what Matt and I did, and it worked well.
GS: You talk about working with Matt Welch - both of you put in top-10 performances. How did you guys work together out on the course?
OA: I actually didn't see Matt up until the mile. When I saw him, I was like, 'Let's just stay together after this and work together. We'll make our move at six kilometers.' That's what we did. We tried to keep an eye out for the leaders to make sure they didn't get too far out ahead. We didn't want to fall back too far where we couldn't make our move.
GS: You have a little bit of a break in competition before the Wisconsin meet. What are you going to focus on between now and then?
OA: It's a bigger meet with a lot of teams. We're going to need to go out a little bit quicker than we did at Griak. We'll start doing some interval work and some race-specific type of workouts that will gear us up for that. It should be exciting. We have three weeks to work up to that.
GS: Last one, Gophers great and U.S. Olympian Hassan Mead was at the course on Saturday. What was it like to have him right there are you guys were starting off?
OA: I actually didn't see him until right before the gun was about to go off. I saw him and Coach Plaz there - it really pumped me up. To see someone who had been on this course ever since he was in high school and now to see where he's at…it was really inspiring.
The Maroon & Gold return to action with the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational in Madison, Wis., on Friday, Oct. 14 while another group will be in action on Saturday, Oct. 15 at the Jim Drews Invitational in Ettrick, Wis.
Players Mentioned
