Follow senior Will Shafer as he embarks on his senior season at Gray New Gloucester HS. Shafer is one of the top distance runners in the state, he was the Class B state champion in the 800m, and ran the second fastest 1600m in the state in 2013. Shafer finished 10th in the Class B XC state championship last fall, see what he's doing to get to the next level
Alright friends, the fun starts tomorrow! I had a request to step up my blogging game and start producing blogs with a little more frequency, so this one’s for you Bryce Murdick.
I thought I would spend a little bit of time in this blog talking about the mental part of running, particularly racing. With good training partners, it’s easier to get through tough workouts at practice. However, when it come to racing, it’s often up to you about how much pain you’re going to put your body through and what limits you’re going to push. For me, the mental part of track races comes easy, it’s cross-country where I struggle. I find it hard to race hard for a full 5k. My head will always be telling me negative thoughts, trying to convince me to slow down, take it easy, enjoy the fall foliage. Perhaps the biggest mental obstacle that I’ve faced for cross-country is the 17:00 barrier. After running 17:08 as a freshman, I still have yet to break 17:00 on the trails. Last year, every race, I thought it was going to be THAT race, the race where I finally ran under 17 minutes. It killed me to race at states and still come up four seconds short of my goal. I know that breaking 17 was more mental than physical. Physically, I was much bigger, faster and stronger than I had been as a freshman. However, as a freshman I was carefree and ran without any mental constraints. As a junior I was burdened by the fact that I still hadn’t broken that elusive time barrier. Now, in retrospect, I believe it was this mental burden that was holding me back from reaching the goals I had set for myself.
This past weekend I wanted to set about “breaking the barrier”, by running a 5k under 17:00. I ran the Breakaway 5k, and despite getting smoked by my summer training partner, was able to meet my goal. My hope is that now that I have broken through that barrier, I can revert to my carefree racing ways of freshman year, and hopefully make some break throughs this fall!
I can only speak for myself when I talk about the mental part of racing, but I hope that others can relate to this article and start breaking down their own mental barriers! Good luck to all those with pre-season tomorrow, lets have a great XC season!
Your blogging pal, Will
