MIT track freshman record falls after 16 years

With John Noland, Andrew Romain, and Ed Patron, I helped set the 3200m relay freshman record at MIT in 1992 at 8:05.13.  We had broken the previous record, set the year before, by 17 seconds.  Sadly, 16 years later, our own record has been broken by 8 seconds (and the same team has already broken their own record by 3 more seconds).

Congrats to Prevost, Welle, Conrad, and Kleinguetl!

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The race recap:

The freshman 4x880 relay team of Richard Prevost, Paul Welle, Shawn Conrad and Kevin Kleinguetl wanted to go for the MIT freshman record of 8:05.13 set back in 1992, also at Harvard. Prevost, primarily a distance runner, led off with a fine 1:59.2 and handed the baton to Welle in third place. Even though the handoff was a bit sloppy, Welle got out well, took the lead halfway through and held on to first place, running an outstanding 1:57.6. Conrad held onto the lead for a while but could not stay with the top two runners in the final 200, handing off to Kleinguetl in a distant third despite running 2:01.5. Kleinguetl could not close the gap despite a 57.4 first 400 and finished with a 1:58.8 for a new freshman record of 7:57.23.