Prior to speaking on any other topic, I’d like to express my happiness for Pat Dupont. This kid is a stud. 2x All-American in back-to-back seasons and he did it modestly. He was incredibly consistent for us and finished off his cross career as one of the most decorated cross country runners from Syracuse. What a joy it was been journeying with him and Tito. Those guys are leaders and I’m sad to see their eligibility run out. I feel blessed to have another year to continue what they’ve started, but I wish they could be there. Those two will be hard to replace, but the program has learned a lot from them.

My last post came before northeast regions and NCAA’s. To recap those briefly, northeast regions was weight off the shoulders. All season, to put it bluntly, we ran like shit. It is such an incredible feeling to come away with a big victory and a ton of confidence. We baby-jogged 7k of the race and then raced 3k, so we were lucky to have our legs back under us in a few days. Then, there was NCAA’s. Like the last two years, we finished in the middle. 14th in 2009, 14th in 2010, 15th in 2011. It’s frustrating. I am not putting the blame on myself, but I know that if I finished with Tito, we would have been 11th place. That is much more respectable and a spot where we should very well be competitive at. I just wish we could get another chance for Pat and Tito. It was bittersweet as the season went so poorly, then we won northeast regions, but then fell back a little bit at the big dance. At this moment, I am just trying to take in what I’ve learned and key off of that for the future.

A couple shocking stats can really sum up how the last year of training went for me. Unfortunately, I was in a vicious cycle for a while of one injury leading to another, mainly due to compensation issues. Over the course of the last 365 days, I have not run on 139 of them. Of those remaining 226 ‘healthy’ days, 57 of them were only 5 miles or less on that given day. If you combine those two, it comes out to over half the days from the last year being either off or junk mileage. When it’s broken down to the nitty-gritty, it’s quite sad. This has quite easily been the hardest year of training for me, but it was challenging in multiple aspects on top of that. Of course, physical ailments were obstacles to overcome, but the mental difficulties are the hardest to fight. There were a couple of times when I thought I was going to throw in the towel. I just could not get in even a month of healthy training and I really just became overwhelmed with frustration, although I kept plugging away because I knew I had something to prove and I was being counted on.

Onward! Having something to prove is probably what has kept me healthy through these past couple of months. I am elated to be heading into this indoor season healthy (knock on wood) and I know Joe Whelan is, as well. We were jogging around after the race talking about how it is going to be strange running track. Both of us have been hampered by the injury plague and missed out on racing track the past couple of years. This time, we’ll be going out with something to prove. Big things are ahead for the Orange. This team is so damn good, but we need to race like it. Yeah, that would be calling me out in my own blog. I know I haven’t raced anywhere near what I’m capable of and maybe I am just in need some healthy training, which is coming. I’m excited for what the future holds for the team and me. We’re going to do some big things this year.

Pockets