Morehead, Ky. – The Morehead State men's and women's indoor track teams will make their second trip to Huntington, W.Va., this season for the two-day Marshall Invitational. The competition will take place at the Jeff Small Track at the Chris Cline Indoor Athletics Complex. Action gets underway Friday at 6:30 p.m. Eight events will take place in the evening session, before the bulk of the meet resumes Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m.

Ten teams are expected to participate, including Eastern Kentucky, Northern Kentucky and Wright State. Marshall's senior recognition festivities will be held Saturday morning. The schedule is expected to last through the late afternoon.

The format of the competition is similar to the Ohio Valley Conference Championship, which will be the Eagles' next contest. It will give coach Clay Dixon a chance to set his lineup for the OVC meet.

MSU will compete in the 5000-meter run and the distance medley relay on Friday night. The other seven events in which the team has entries will take place on Saturday. Dixon will have 32 athletes running in a total of 40 events. It will be the first time many of the Eagles will compete in more than one race in a meet this winter.

"For most part we will be doing the events we will be doing at conference with a few exceptions. We'll be figuring out the 5000m. Not running this past week (at the PNC Bank Bellarmine Classic, which the team missed due to weather) really messed us up in that. Last week was supposed to be our final experimental meet and this week was supposed to be a preview for the conference events," he said. "But, 80 percent of our athletes are running the events they're going to run at conference. If one or two people who race something this weekend do well or do poorly, it will change how we prepare these next two weeks and may change what they do at conference."

Missing out on the PNC Bank Bellarmine Classic caused Dixon to make some changes to the team's training regimen. However, the Eagles did get in some quality work over the last several days.

"This past week has been really nice. It's been nice out. I think we've gotten out of hard part of winter. There are no big storms expected the next two weeks or so," he said. "(During the bad weather), we had to modify a lot of our stuff. Our distance runners have been on the treadmills, and the sprinters have been running hallway sprints, just to keep our legs going."

One of Dixon's big focuses this weekend will be setting his relay foursomes for the conference championship. He also will be closely watching the women's performance in the 5000m. It will be the first time this season anyone will run that distance.

"We're doing an 'A' and 'B' team in the 4x4(00-meter relay) to finalize our 'A' team for conference," he said. "One goal is to see how the girls do in the 5000 meters. We'll have three girls there. It'll be their first time running there. I want to see if they should race there (at conference) or do something else.

"Another goal is to see how we'll be setting up our DMR. It's an interesting race. It's very strategic with different distances (1200m, 400m, 800, 1600m in order)," he continued. "It's critical to see how we want to arrange our runners, and also to look at how does this person do in this leg and then how will they do the next day in another event."

It also will be MSU's first two-day meet. Dixon thinks his team is prepared for the extended contest.

"I'm pretty confident our athletes are able to handle a one-day turnaround," he said.

Looking ahead to the OVC Championship, the schedule of events at that meet will be a major factor in determining who fills out the DMR lineup, so that the athletes are fresh for their best event while still being able to maximize its scoring potential.

"We need to figure out our final relay lineups. The 4x4 should be finalized this weekend. The DMR is very strategic and we need to figure out our strategy for it," Dixon said.

Both who runs the DMR and the order in which the lineup is set will both factor into Dixon's decision.

"We could put 100 percent of our focus in the DMR and not race other events trying to score a lot of points in it. But, we eliminate the possibility of doing well in the 800m, 5K and the mile," he said.

"(In the DMR), how you set the lineup is also strategic. The first leg is three and a half to four minutes of racing. It requires leg speed and endurance. You've got to have someone to keep the team in the race. If you're already out of it, it's hard to catch back up," Dixon said. "Then the last leg is five to five-and-a-half minutes of racing. Based on the math, that's just over half of the race run by just one runner. We can make up time (on that leg), but if you're 200 meters back than it'll be big shoes for that person to fill. So, there's many different strategies and it'll be a big weekend to finally determine what everything is going to be."

This weekend will be the final indoor meet for the MSU men. Dixon hopes to use the competition to gauge their progress this winter as they prepare for the outdoor season.

"Our 5K'ers, it will be fun to see the guys in that," he said. "It's kind of a little check on where we are at. It'll be nice to go out there and get someone's heart rate on everything and say, 'OK, this person is doing well and we need to keep up our training, or this person isn't doing well and how do we need to change the training."

The OVC Championship will be the women's next competition. The two-day meet will take place February 23-24 in Birmingham, Ala.