Gillespie and Chenoweth have become very close, close enough that the captain is comfortable pointing out some areas where his teammate’s game could improve.

“He is thinking about growing a mustache,” Gillespie said. “If he had had the mustache on [Friday], he could have gone 24:15.”

Chenoweth and Gillespie finished 1-2 in the Harvard-Yale meet last year, making this the second straight year that Chenoweth has won. The experience only makes him more dangerous.

“He has a confidence in his fitness,” Saretsky said. “He focuses on what he can control and lets the rest take care of itself.”

Chenoweth, along with the Harvard team, proved definitively that they are in good shape for the season.

“It was a good first race,” Chenoweth said. “One of the goals is to get out there and see what kind of shape we’re in.”

“I was able to prove to myself that I’m getting into race shape,” he added. “It was nice to be able to get out there and run a good time and feel good doing it.”

But proving themselves aside, all agreed that it was extra sweet to beat the Bulldogs. With this victory, the Crimson has triumphed three years in a row—every year, Chenoweth noted, that he has been at Harvard.

“We have a couple meets to look forward to every year,” Chenoweth said. “We want to continue the streak as long as we can.”

“We looked forward to [this meet] all summer and all fall,” Gillespie added. “It’s got such an enormous history.” This year’s meet was the 97th between the two schools.

Chenoweth did all he could to have it swing the Crimson’s way. But while the race for first place was a blowout, the meet as a whole was tight until the end, when Harvard came through, 26-29. Chenoweth pointed to a team-wide strategy to start off fast.

“It usually goes out pretty slow,” Chenoweth said. “The Yale guys weren’t ready for us to [start off] like that.”

And for Chenoweth, the strategy was perfect.

“I just took off,” Chenoweth said simply. “The Yale guys kind of let me go.”