| Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, TRIB-LiVE
School: Fox Chapel
Year: Sophomore
Sport: Cross country
Claim to fame: Urban crossed the finish line first with a time of 20:54 at the Gateway Invitational on Saturday. Fox Chapel finished first in the team competition.
What led to your success Saturday?
I think just a lot of training. We started training pretty much as soon as track season ended. We had two weeks of what we call active rest, so we are running, but just not as much as we usually do. And then since then we’ve been running every day since the start of summer, and I think that’s mainly what gets us to this point. … And I think it’s also being an all-around runner, not just being a runner while you’re at practice, but doing the little things right even when you’re not at practice, drinking enough water, eating the right things, getting enough sleep, stretching. Everything we do throughout the entire day is what gets us to this point.
What was a typical training regimen consist of?
Over the summer, we’re mainly building our mileage base, and so our mileage increases. We run every single day in the summer, but we don’t do any real workout stuff, and we’re just mainly trying to build mileage. And then once we get to the actual season, at this point we’re about 50 miles a week and two of those days we’ll do workouts where we’ll run some faster stuff, and then one of those days we’ll have a long run day, and our long run days right now are about 11 miles.
What are your goals for this season?
I think one of my main goals is to medal at states, so that would mean top 25 in the state. And I’d like to be in the top 10 at WPIALs. One of my goals for the team is to make it to states as a team.
What’s your favorite class?
Probably calculus, because I have a really great teacher, and she’s just really engaging all the time. But I’m really looking forward to physics next semester, because my coach actually teaches physics.