Running cross country for a large school can present challenges

By Kevin Green

A team’s season can get intense, nerve-racking and tiring when its schedule is backloaded with important contests, even in a noncontact sport such as cross-country.

Vlad Munteanu, a sophomore cross-country runner at Stillwater High School, had that problem this year, enduring a five-meet stretch with little recovery time from mid-October to mid-November.

The season’s final month began with the Central Oklahoma Athletic Conference Championship at Irving Middle School in Norman on Oct. 13 and ended with the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel on Nov. 14 at Rogers High School in Rogers, Arkansas.

Munteanu’s times suffered from the five-race gauntlet. During the season, Munteanu improved his time on three occasions when he had more than a week between races, whereas he improved only once when he had less than a week.

This is primarily a problem for the Class 5A and Class 6A schools in cross-country because the smaller schools, 2A through 4A, run their state meets a week earlier than the big schools.

The extra week off allotted to these athletes from small schools provides them a much-needed recovery period before the all-star races, Meet of Champions and the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel, begin.

“It’s not a good setup for big school schools to run five weeks in a row,” Stillwater coach David Crynes said. “You have conference, regionals and state, and then you got Meet of Champions and then this. That is a lot of racing.”

The advantage gained proved to be beneficial for runners from small schools, for a majority of them placed in front of the big school runners in the Meet of Champions and the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel, running slower times than the runners from big schools did at the state meet.

When Munteanu had more than one week to recover, his time improved significantly, and as the stress level of each race grew and the recovery periods shortened, Munteanu began feeling the fatigue. With the exception of the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel in Rogers, Arkansas, Munteanu continually ran each race more slowly than he did the previous week.

Junior Isai Rodriguez of Lomega-Ringwood [Class 2A] won the Meet of Champions in 16 minutes, 8 seconds, and senior Zach Black of Sallisaw [Class 4A] won the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel in 15:58.

Both times are slower than Munteanu’s personal best of 15:56, which he ran at the Class 6A East Regional Championship at O’Brien Park in Tulsa on Oct. 24.

Munteanu originally wanted his season to go on one week longer, but after performing below his expectations for three straight races, he decided to forgo the opportunity.

“It’s not very easy having to run five hard races in five weeks; I’m exhausted,” Munteanu said. “I was thinking about running the [Nike South Cross-Country Regional] this year, but I decided not to and do it next year instead because I definitely need to get a lot more preparation and a lot more rest in order to run in that big of a race.”

Norman North’s Ean Beyer, the Class 6A state champion, faced a similar downfall, dropping from 15:24 at the regional meet to 16:20 at the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel.

However, Beyer, though competing in the same regular-season races as Munteanu at the end of the season, received more rest. He did not participate in the Meet of Champions, electing to accept an at-large bid for the Oklahoma vs. Arkansas Cross-Country Duel.

To qualify for Team Oklahoma, runners must finish in the top 20 at Meet of Champions, but if they are unable to compete in the race, up to five of them may receive an at-large nomination. Being a state champion, Beyer easily obtained a nomination.

Upon learning about Beyer’s course of action, Crynes became annoyed, not because Beyer got to compete in the race, but because that is the option he would have preferred for Munteanu.

“You have to choose which ones you want to skip and which ones you want to focus on,” Crynes said. “That’s what we’re going to do next year. We’re going to skip Meet of Champions and get that extra week of recovery before this one.

“Whenever you compete against kids from other states, you’re not only representing yourself and your school; you’re also representing your state, so you want to be prepared and well rested so you can run the best race you possible can.”

Times were not the only thing at risk for Munteanu during the five-meet stretch. Such stretches can bring mental and physical fatigue and injuries into question.

The coaches want Munteanu to get all of the experience he can racing some of the best runners in the region, but they also want to keep Munteanu healthy so he can continue improving during the next two seasons and win an individual state championship.

“He’s young this year and this is new for him, so he’s wanting to race every weekend,” Stillwater assistant coach Rusty Atkins said. “He could hurt himself and get tired. You put everything into state; that’s the big one on the calendar, so it’d be nice to have a week off after that race.”

The girls were also at risk of injury because of the cramped schedule, and Atkins knows what it is like having top runners struggle with injuries.

He mainly coaches the girls, and junior Elise Rackley, the top runner on the team, fought a right hip injury throughout the season. Rackley advanced to the state meet, and because of the lack of recovery time between each meet, she never had the opportunity to properly heal the injury.

There were times where she had to sit out practice because of the pain.

“It hurt a lot, so it was really hard for me to get over that pain,” Rackley said. “That was the biggest struggle; making sure I ran well even though I was hurting.”

With the season over, Rackley makes frequent visits to the doctor’s office to get electric therapy, and she also takes medicine to help subside the pain.

Having a back-loaded schedule can also affect the runners’ schoolwork.

Senior Jay Ogle struggles with the urge to relax because as the competitiveness and stressfulness of late-season races increase, he becomes mentally fatigued.

“Sleeping,” Ogle said. “I get caught up in napping so much that it’s just like, ‘I want to sleep rather than do this homework.’ It’ll be like 5 in the afternoon, and I’ll just want to take a nap.

“That definitely makes it hard if it’s the day of a hard race and we just ran super hard, and I just want to sleep, but I have a nine-page excerpt from Heart of Darkness that I have to annotate.”

Despite the tough schedule and the risk of injury and mental fatigue, Munteanu said racing never gets old.

“It really tires you out and it’s just exhausting, but it’s exciting, and I think next year is going to be even better,” Munteanu said.