Stillwater’s distance running program has its own version of Mount Rushmore. The mythical shrine honors former running stars Andy Tate, Sean Graham, Luke Watson and Ben Blankenship, who among them have a combined 15 individual and team state championships.
Junior Eli Krahn wants to be a part of that group.
“To leave a legacy like that would be incredible; I’d love it,” Krahn said.
“Eli most definitely has the potential to be with those guys,” Ponies cross country and track coach Scott Christensen said. “I’ll have to come up with a new analogy, though. Mount Rushmore is just four guys.”
Krahn already has won three individual state championships. Last spring, he won both the Class 2A 1,600- and 3,200-meter titles at the state track and field meet. As a freshman, he won the 1,600 in a national-record time. He also has been a part of two big-school cross country championships.
For all of his success, however, Krahn is still searching for something elusive: his first victory in a varsity cross country race.
Ranked No. 3 in the big-school class, Krahn has been runner-up twice already this season, to top-ranked Connor Olson of Wayzata at the Marshfield Invitational last month and teammate Bailey Hesse-Withbroe at the Faribault Invitational.
“Finishing second isn’t frustrating,” Krahn said. “I’m learning what it takes to be successful in cross country. It’s a process. Just because I have had success in track doesn’t mean I will have instant success in cross country. I’m confident I will get over the hump soon.”
It could come as soon as Thursday, when Krahn is scheduled to face Olson again at the Rochester Invitational. Krahn was on the sideline for last year’s race because of a stress reaction on the left fibula.
Krahn tried to work his way through the discomfort and overcompensation that resulted from the injury, but it lingered. He and Christensen decided it was best for his long-term future if he sat out the rest of last season to heal in time for the track season.
The hiatus lasted a week after watching the Ponies finish runner-up to Wayzata.
“I couldn’t just stand by and watch my teammates make a run at Wayzata without me,” Krahn said. “I decided I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t help them out.”
Krahn came back slowly. He didn’t participate in some of the intense workouts and trained on his own with fewer miles and less speedwork.
His first race back last season was the Suburban East Conference meet, where he placed seventh. At the Section 4AA meet, he was third. At the state meet, he came in 12th overall as the Ponies finished third.
“The results were encouraging,” Krahn said.
That paved the way for Krahn’s track season, where he blazed to a pair of state titles.
“His time is going to come in cross country,” Christensen said. “There has been some bad luck in his not winning. It has just been a lot of this, that or whatever else that has kept him from the getting to finish line first. It’s part of racing.”
Watson, a 1998 Stillwater graduate and a professional distance runner for 10 years after his collegiate career at Notre Dame, is considered the gold standard in the Ponies distance program. He was a five-time state champion. But Krahn already has run faster.
As a freshman, he broke the U.S. 1,600-meter record for his age group, a mark that had stood for 40 years, with a time of 4 minutes, 9.38 seconds at the state meet. Earlier that spring, he won the 1,600 at the Hamline Elite Meet, beating teammate Wayde Hall, a state cross country champion who now runs for the University of Minnesota.
“Many of Eli’s times are faster than Luke’s at this point, but this is a different era,” Christensen said.
“Like my coach says, I can’t be Eli Krahn the track runner in the fall,’ ” Krahn said. “I have to be Eli Krahn the cross country runner. I am learning that. I am motivated in cross country. I feel like I have something to prove. I feel like I have to make a statement, that I am not just a guy that is fast on rubber, that I can run on grass, too.”
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