On Wednesday Jan 20th, Jenny Barringer wrote about her considerations in deciding which sponsor to choose in her post-collegiate career. She planned on breaking the news on her blog at Flotrack on Friday Jan 22.

I’m finding though that there is a lot more involved than just that. It’s not dissimilar from making a decision about college. Who you work with, what message they carry, what their product is like, where they’re located- all of these things can have a subtle but eventually substantial influence on how you make up your mind. I remember back to college recruiting and how aspects of Colorado, that I never anticipated, were eventually the elements that drew me, as a person, to want to live here. Now, the process moves on from considerations of education to an entire career path.

Well news broke early from the Denver Post on Thursday afternoon that the CU Boulder runner that she will be running for New Balance.

The New Balance site is teasing it will be announcing some “very big news” on Friday.

Announcing...

Also sponsored by New Balance is Boulder Elite 2008 US Half Marathon Champ James Carney, coached by Brad Hudson, who makes his home in Lafayette, CO. Who apparently has listed the Marshall Mesa as one of his favorite training venues.

We look forward to watching Barringer continue to build on her already illustrious career.

CU Cross Country

BOULDER— The University of Colorado women’s and men’s cross country teams are each ranked No. 6 in the final USTFCCCA Coaches Top 30 after placing first and second, respectively, at the NCAA Mountain Region Championship on Saturday.

Colorado will race at the 2009 NCAA Championship on Monday, November 23, in Terre Haute, Ind. The men are slated to run first at 10:08 a.m. and the women will race at 10:58 a.m.

Set your DVR

NCAA Cross Country Championships

Barringer will be eying the individual championship as she has been the runner-up the last two times she has raced at the meet (2006, 2007). Both championship races will be broadcast live on Versus Network (Comcast Channel 73) and streamed online via NCAA.com.

The Buffalo men collected 296 points in the poll for their No. 6 ranking. They dropped from fifth to sixth while BYU moved up from 14th to fifth with 306 points. BYU defeated the Buffs by a single point at regionals. CU had all five scorers place in the top 24 to earn all-region honors, but BYU had its top five finish in the top 16 to win the title. Stanford remained the top team in the poll and has had the ranking for the last six polls. The Cardinal earned 11 first-place votes to take the top honor with 359 points, while Oklahoma State is No. 2 with 349 points.

The CU women picked up 299 points in the poll for their sixth-place ranking. Colorado won the women’s regional championship for the first time since 2006. Jenny Barringer became the first CU female to win the regional title since 2004. Washington has been ranked on top of the poll for all eight polls. The Huskies took 10 of 12 first-place votes on the women’s side with 358 points. Villanova, the second-place team, recorded the other two votes and took 350 points.

Courtesy of CUBuffs.com

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

The University of Colorado men’s and women’s cross country teams punched their tickets to the 2009 NCAA Championships on Saturday afternoon at the University of New Mexico Golf Course.

The No. 6 ranked women’s team won the regional for the first time since 2006 and the No. 5 ranked men’s team took second; ending a streak of six straight regional titles. Senior Jenny Barringer also won the women’s race and was the first CU woman to win the individual title since 2004 when Renee Metivier took home the crown. (The top two teams automatically qualify for nationals while the top four individuals not associated with either of those teams also qualify.)  The NCAA Championship is Monday, November 23, in Terre Haute, Ind.

“It was really exciting,” Barringer said. “I ran at this course in 2006 as a sophomore and I remember having a great team and coming in and taking second to Sally (Kipyego) and I feel like that was so long ago. So, coming back here and being in a different position with an equally amazing team and this time pulling in the win was really fun.”

Barringer ran a different race this time. Instead of jumping out to a lead and leaving the pack in the dust, she ran with the top pack for the first 4k. Freshman Allie McLaughlin was in the lead pack with Barringer and the two ran side by side along with the top three harriers for Tech. McLaughlin was even able to lead the race for part of the way.

“I wanted to run with Allie for the majority of the race and then start to pull away with about 2k left,” Barringer explained.

When Barringer finally did pull away from the pack with 2k remaining, she won the race easily and had 12 seconds on the runner-up Cecily Lemmon from BYU. Barringer broke the tape in 20 minutes, 29.0 seconds and Lemmon finished in 20:41.1.

Read the rest of the article and watch post race interviews with Jenny Barringe, Jordan Kyle, Richard Medina and Allie McLaughlin

http://www.cubuffs.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=600&atclid=204833522

Photo Courtesy: Chip Bromfield, ProMotion Ltd.

University of Colorado senior Jenny Barringer won the individual crown at the 2009 Big 12 Cross Country Championship on Saturday morning, while the CU men’s and women’s teams each took second place.

Barringer took off from the gun, running up the first of many hills, and never looked back as she captured her first conference cross country title.

“This took me five years. It took me three years of college to get to the Olympics (3,000-meter steeplechase), and five years of cross country to get to the Big 12 Championship. It means a lot and it means a lot that I came back with a really strong team. This is absolutely the most fun race I’ve had in college so far. It was a really fun day.” - Jenny Barringer

“She was cruising and had a huge smile on her face, It was an easy run for her and she was having fun the whole way.” – Colorado Head Coach Mark Wetmore

On the men’s side, the top four finishers were Cowboys as OSU got all five of its scorers across the finish in the top 14. Colorado had all five scorers finish in the top 15.

The first Buffalo to cross the line was senior Kenyon Neuman. He was seventh with a time of 25:10.33 on the 8k course. Christian Thompson, who led the Buffs at pre-nats, earned his first top-10 finish by placing ninth (25:18.83). He was 29th in 2008.

Read more at CUBuffs.com

Post Race Interview http://www.cubuffs.com/mediaPortal/player.dbml?catid=1802&id=657018

BOULDER — The weather is turning colder but the University of Colorado men’s and women’s cross country teams are looking to heat up their seasons at the NCAA Pre-National Invitational on Saturday, October 17, in Terre Haute, Ind.

The invite is the first big meet of the season for Colorado. The Buffs have competed in three meets this year, including two home meets. Competition at this contest will be tough as there are 18 ranked men’s teams and 19 ranked women’s teams in the mix. The Buffaloes are two of those ranked teams. The men are tied for fourth and the women are ranked No. 19 in the most recent USTFCCCA Coaches Top 30 Poll.

The men will start off the meet for CU by running in the 8-kilometer “white” race at 9:40 a.m. against No. 1 ranked Stanford, No. 6 BYU and No. 8 Portland. There are three other top-30 teams in the race. The women have been assigned to run in the 6k “blue” race that starts at 10:20 a.m. They will also run against six top-30 teams which include No. 4 Oregon, No. 6 Stanford and No. 7 Iowa State.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the women are lead by senior Jenny Barringer. Barringer has been the top racer for the Buffs since her sophomore season (2006) and was the NCAA runner-up in 2006 and 2007 before redshirting the 2008 season. Fellow senior Emily Hanenburg and junior Laura Thweatt, the reigning Big 12 Runner of the Week, will also take some of the leadership responsibility for the Buffs.

Kenyon Neuman won the men’s title at the Rocky Mountain Shootout and looks to have a great senior campaign for the Buffs. Neuman, along with senior Jordan Kyle will likely give CU a great 1-2 punch. Juniors Matt Tebo and Richard Medina have been scoring for the Buffs since their freshman year and will once again add a great deal of depth to the Buffalo line-up.

In total, the Buffs are allowed to put seven racers on the start line of the team races and will have some harriers competing in the open sections.

Indiana State hosts the meet for the sixth straight year and the seventh time in eight years. The invitational will take place at the LaVern Gibson Cross Country Course and is a chance for teams to preview the NCAA Championship course, although the men will run a 10k course at nationals versus an 8k course on Saturday. There are four team races, two men’s and two women’s (blue and while) as well as an open race for each gender. Results will be posted upon the conclusion of each race at www.gosycamores.com.

BOULDER— The University of Colorado men’s and women’s cross country teams each moved up in this week’s USTFCCCA Coaches Top 30 Poll, released on Tuesday.

The men’s team moved up to fourth place and are tied with Big 12 rival Oklahoma State with 319 points. The Buffs were ranked sixth in the last poll prior to winning their 19th straight Rocky Mountain Shootout title on Saturday. Senior Kenyon Neuman led the Buffs at the meet by recording the 12th fastest 8k time in course history (24 minutes, 51 seconds).

In the regional rankings, CU fell one spot to second behind Northern Arizona, which is ranked No. 2 in the national poll. Colorado’s women moved up one spot to No. 19. The Buffs recorded 133 points after winning their 11th consecutive Rocky Mountain Shootout title.

Senior Jenny Barringer set the Buffalo Ranch 5.8k course record and became the second female to ever finish the course in less than 20 minutes with a mark of 19:25. The Buffs rank second in the region behind NAU, which is No. 27 in the national poll.

Barringer, who was named this week’s Big 12 Runner of the Week, is also up for the 2009 USATF Jesse Owens Athlete of the Year Award presented by Nike. Fan voting goes until Tuesday, October 13, and can be done at: http://www.usatf.org/promotions/JesseOwensAwardVote/index.asp.

For the third straight poll, Washington has the top ranked women’s team with 360 points. Stanford moved up two spots in the men’s poll to take the top place with 355 points. Oregon, which had been No. 1 for the first two weeks, fell to seventh with 293 points.

Some of the Buff will head to the Fort Hays Invite on Saturday, October 10, in Fort Hays, Kan., but the next big meet for the varsity squad is NCAA Pre-Nationals on Saturday, October 17, in Terre Haute, Ind.