Milesplit Arizona Cross Country Journals
Billy Orman returns this season as the top runner in Arizona with a National ranking of 9. Billy had a great cross country season last year, making it all the way to Foot Locker Nationals and finishing 2nd at the Nike SW Regionals. Billy also posted some great times in track finishing the season with a 4:19.50 1600 at the Chandler Rotary and a 9:04.97 3200 at the Meet of Champions. He is set for a great season. Keep checking back as Billy journals about his final prep cross country season.
Billy Orman
(Sr., Tuba City)
Final XC Journal (December 21, 2010)
Hello Milesplit readers. Well, now that my cross country season has ended, I thought I would write one last journal to wrap things up.
First of all, I would like to thank Margot Kelly for all her support and coverage of our sport. That is especially important around here, where none of the newspapers cover anything about running. A lot of people at my school regularly check the site for news, so we all really appreciate it.
Since I last wrote, I’ve run in two races, Foot Locker West and Foot Locker Nationals. I really enjoyed both races and it was a nice way to end my high school cross country career.
Foot Locker West was a great race for me. Going into the race, one part of me wanted to just qualify for nationals and to not necessarily try and win it; last year I had raced as hard as I could just to qualify and I had nothing left for nationals, so this year I thought perhaps I should just run hard enough to qualify. But another part of me wanted to try to win – I had managed to stay undefeated the entire season and I realized my chances of winning at nationals were pretty much zero, so I thought this might be a nice race to try and win. I actually hadn’t made up my mind which approach I was going to take even by the start, so I just improvised and stayed near the front. Jantzen Oshier took the pace out really fast and I decided not to try to catch him but to just maintain contact. Toward the end of the race, I was able to make up some distance on the hills, so I decided to push the last downhill off reservoir and was able to take the lead with 800 to go. It felt very good to win one last race and it was also great to see the smiles of the other qualifiers as I remembered how I felt when I qualified last year.
As I mentioned above, I was pretty exhausted after Foot Locker West last year. This year I knew the course and tried to prepare by doing more hill workouts and downhill workouts as well. This year I also made sure I did a two-mile cool down, which I hadn’t done last year. And for the rest of day after the race, I tried to stay off my feet as much as possible and just rest. I think this really helped since I was not sore at all this year.
The following week I drastically cut back on my miles in preparation for Nationals. I think I did about 30 miles, most of them very easy. I did one short speed workout on Tuesday and that’s pretty much it.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Foot Locker, this is how it works. They buy you a ticket and fly you out to San Diego on Thursday morning. From the airport, they drive you out to the Del Coronado hotel, which is an old historic hotel right on the beach. It looks really awesome all decorated for Christmas and has really awesome features like an outdoor skating rink (I did not skate). It has to be the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed at and I can’t believe Foot Locker pays for a bunch of rowdy cross country runners to stay there, but I certainly thank them for doing it. My decision to run Foot Locker this year was based in large part on how well they treated us last year and this year it was even better. Thanks Foot Locker and Saucony.
So once at the hotel they treat you very well and give you a lot of Saucony gear including shoes, warm ups and a bunch of shirts. After that, on Friday we went to the course to do a run through. Unlike last year, the weather this year was very nice. So I was really looking forward to the race on Saturday – last year the weather was awful but this year it was more like the sunny weather I’m used to.
Saturday morning came and we hung out and watched the girls’ race. After the introductions, we were ready to go. As expected the race went out really fast. I think I ran the first 400 in 60 seconds, way faster than I’d ever started before. I had never raced most of the people in the race but I thought to have any chance of placing well, I had to stay right near the front. In retrospect, I think this was a mistake. I think Andrew Gardener, who placed 2nd in the West regional and 4th in the final, ran a much smarter race – he did not take it out too hard and actually stayed near the back of the pack the first mile. I just didn’t do enough speed work during cross country season to be able to survive that fast an opening sprint and I paid for it later in the race. Live and learn. It was on the second repeat of the big hill that I really started to feel myself tightening up. But my goal for the race was to be top 5 and I got 6th, so I guess going out too fast wasn’t all that bad. I was also happy with my time, which was about 45 seconds faster than last year’s. Congratulations to all the runners who made it to nationals – I know it sounds trite but it really is an honor just to run in this race.
Well, that’s about it. I plan on taking a few weeks break from running. In fact, I’m getting my wisdom teeth removed so I have no choice but to rest. I hope everyone has a great holiday break. I look forward to seeing a lot of you during track season. My major goal for track will be to try to break 9 minutes in the 3200. I’m hoping to be able to race at Arcadia this spring and I hope any of you other 3200 guys out there will also come so we can run a really fast race. I might also try to race New Balance but that’s too far in the future to be sure. As far as college goes, I have a couple more college visits to make in January and then I’ll make my final decision in February.
Happy Holidays.
Grande chère et beau feu!
~Billy O.
Milesplit Arizona Cross Country Journals
