Junior Geoff Lambert has spent his spring break in Crawfordsville preparing to run at the 2007 NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field National Championship Meet being held this weekend in Terre Haute, Indiana. He enters this weekend's competition with the fastest 800-meter run time of any DIII athlete in the nation.
Lambert, who just missed a spot in the finals at last year's nationals at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, returns to a track where he already knows he can turn in a fast performance in the 800 meters. The Chesterton, Indiana native ran his first meet of the 2007 indoor season at Rose-Hulman, the host school for this weekend's national championship meet. Lambert won the 800 with in that season-opener with an NCAA "B" cut time of 1:53.60.
That mark stood as his fastest time of the year until just last week. Lambert shattered both the North Coast Athletic Conference and Wabash school records in the 800, winning the title at the NCAC Championship meet with a time of 1:52.72. He not only earned All-Conference and Distance/Middle Distance Runner of the Year, but met the NCAA automatic qualifying mark with his winning effort. He is the only athete in Division III to meet the automatic qualifying mark, making him the top seed coming into Friday night's preliminaries.
Lambert, who earned All-America honors last year with a seventh-place finish at the outdoor national championship meet, hopes to only add an indoor All-America title to his track portfolio this weekend, but perhaps a national title as well.
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