Cross country has spent the first several weeks of school preparing for their upcoming races with schools in the new conference.
“We see the schools from our conference almost every week. During the week, we will have smaller races with just teams from our conference, and on Saturdays, we see the same teams plus more at our bigger invites,” said coach Matthew Zaluckyj.
Cross country runs several miles per day along with different exercises to help them train for the races.
“Our training is mainly running, but we also do lots of long slow distance and we add in a couple workouts to work on the athletes’ abilities to run fast when they’re tired,” said coach Brandon Boyd.
Some runners make it a goal to run every day a certain number of miles in order to help them improve for their races.
“On average, I run about seven miles each day, although about once a week I try to go at least nine. The best time I’ve ever run would be a 16:00, however that was at a slightly shorter course and I’ve almost broken that time already this year,” said runner Liam O’Connell.
Since this is the first year for the NLCC, the coaches and athletes are racing with different schools that may help them become more competitive.
“[This new conference] gives us a chance for our athletes to race the same athletes they did in middle school. I think it really helps our athletes to stay competitive when racing people they know,” said Zaluckyj.