Allie Ostrander, a 2015 graduate of Kenai Central, took 30th place at the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, on Saturday.
Ostrander finished the 10-kilometer senior women’s race in 34 minutes, 11 seconds, while Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet defended her title by winning at 31:05.
The race was run in 80-degree temperatures. The course had double-stacked hay bales, a mud pit, sand and a ramp.
“I’m pretty happy,” Ostrander told letsrun.com. “My plan was to go out conservative and try and stay relaxed and move up as much as I could, just with the heat and the weirdness of the course.”
After going out conservatively, Ostrander said in a prerace interview with media her plan was to move up as many places as possible late in the race to improve the team score of the United States.
Athletes did five laps of the course. Ostrander was in 44th after the third lap, then executed her plan of moving up late.
The three-time NCAA Division I steeplechase champion was the second American after finishing fourth at the USA Track and Field Cross Country Championships in January to qualify for worlds. National champ Weini Kelati Frezghi was the first American at 15th in 32:53.
The United States was able to finish fourth in the team competition.
Kenya had the top five runners in the race and won with a perfect score of 10. Ethiopia had 41, Uganda had 44 and the United States had 113.
