State Champion Spotlight: Luke Laverdiere (Yarmouth HS)

The week of the state meet consisted of some easy mileage with a Tuesday workout at Bates that focused on speed and consistency. I did some extended strides on the road after my easy run two days before to not be flat the day of states. 

To be honest, I wasn't very nervous this year. Usually, however, I imagine everything going so perfectly the day of that nothing could possibly cause me to lose. This method gives me the confidence that it is a fact I will win that day. When I know for a fact that I'll win, I always do. That may sound arrogant to some, but I've found confidence and arrogance are easily confused in some cases such as this, so just deal with it I guess.

 

Considering most of my potential competition had decided to run the 800m instead of the mile, I knew that I would have to push the pace by myself if I wanted to run a good seed time for New England's two weeks later. I knew that I would need to run in the low 4:20 range to be in the fast heat, so I wanted to run consistent 65 second quarter splits and feel smooth in doing so. And, yeah, I'd say I executed it. 

Sure, that race was both a let-down and a breakthrough for me in the sense that I didn't achieve either my time goal or placement goal, but I did manage to fight hard and compete until the very last thousandth of a second. It was by far the closest race I've ever competed in, virtually tying to the hundredth of a second with two other guys and finishing only 0.5 seconds behind 2nd place. In hindsight I'm happy because I learned how fun racing can be when everybody is still in it with 50 meters to go. Also, you can never be unhappy about a PR, regardless of how slim the margin is. 

My only goal this season was to run sub 4:20 in the mile. Originally, I also wanted to run at indoor nationals, but I decided to just call it a season after New England's to chill for a couple weeks for a change. 

I'm not entirely sure at the moment, but I imagine I'll focus primarily on the 3200m at first, but then transition to the 1600m later in the season. I'm still in the process of planning things out with my coach, so nothing is definite.