Several Kansas runners left Thursday’s “distance carnival” with the prizes they’d vied for. Four runners took first and others gave solid performances in their events, which included 800- to 10,000-meter runs.

“It’s always fun to run at Memorial Stadium,” junior Lauren Bonds said.

Bonds took first in the women’s unseeded 800 event, running it in 2:11.67.

“It was good for today, but I wanted something better,” Bonds said.

She may have been shy of her season-best time, but Bonds said the race was good preparation for her main event on Saturday, the 1,500-meter run.

In the women’s 5,000-meter run, sophomore Amanda Miller got the victory with a time of 17:24.15.

“This was good preparation; it’s my first 5K of the season. Hopefully I go out at Drake and regionally qualify,” Miller said.

Last year, Miller took fifth in the event coming off an injury from the indoor season. Miller said having another year of experience helped her to get first this year.

Junior Kellie Schneider and sophomore Kara Windisch won the 1,500-meter and 3,000-meter runs, respectively.

In the men’s 5,000-meter run, freshman Donny Wasinger took second, recording a time of 14:34.11 and junior Bret Imgrund took third with 14:40.08.

The two worked employed some healthy competition to edge into the top three.

“Brett was running really hard and I was running really hard and we kept switching off helping each other.” Wasinger said.

For Wasinger it was his first time running a 5K on a track and was impressed with his performance.

“In high school we did 5K’s on a cross country course and today I ran a minute and 20 seconds faster, so it was a pretty good run,” Wasinger said.

Like Bonds, Wasinger will also be competing in the 1500-meter run on Saturday. He said he would feel a lot more pressure Saturday than he did running the 5K.

And as for the “carnival” as a whole?

“It was just as fun as an actual carnival,” Wasinger joked.