Colin Bennie is currently a sophomore at Syracuse University, majoring in Political Science. The Massachusetts native attended Wachusett Regional High School, where he was a four year member of the cross country and track team. During his high school career, Colin was a 2 x All-State Champion in the Two Mile and racked up impressive personal bests of; 1:56 in the 800, 4:14 in the Mile, and 9:07 in the Two Mile. Over the next few weeks, Colin will be blogging on MileSplit Mass about his role as an integral member of the US#2 Syracuse Orangemen and the pursuit of their first NCAA Team Title since 1951.
Hey everyone,
This is the first of a few pieces that I'm going to be doing about this year's cross-country season, my collegiate running experience so far, and anything that I've found to be helpful in racing. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Colin Bennie, and I am a redshirt sophomore on the Syracuse University men's cross-country team. I ran cross-country and track at Wachusett Regional High School in Holden, MA before moving on to Syracuse. I'll be doing my best to share with you some of the things that I've learned throughout my first couple years being part of a Division I cross-country team, and hopefully I'll be able to give you some advice that can help you either have a strong end of your high school season or prepare for a collegiate career.
First things first, I'm just going to give a little background on how our season has been going so far. With our first major race coming at the end of September, we needed to put in some really solid weeks of training at the end of August and throughout September to get ready for the season. Our first race was in Boston at a course I'm sure many of you are familiar with -- Franklin Park. Going into the race, we were ready to put together a great first effort of the season to show we were ready to accomplish some big things later in the season. Coach usually doesn't spend too much time trying to talk over every aspect of the race; he'll just give us a solid race-plan and leave it to us to make sure we execute it. The race went great, we ended up putting 5 in the top 10, and 7 in the top 17. Obviously, we were wicked pleased with how the race went and with the fact that we won as a team, and it was especially cool for me to have a chance to run in a collegiate race on the Franklin Park course where I had run in high school before I had any legitimate plans to continue running in college. After Boston it was back to work. We had a three-week stretch until we raced in Wisconsin, and after that we head into the post-season, so it was important that we got in some top quality workouts. Going into Wisconsin we knew we had a great opportunity to run a really strong team race, and at an extremely big meet like Wisconsin it would give us some valuable experience that is going to come in handy at Nationals. Being one of the top ranked teams going into the race definitely gave us motivation as well, as we knew everybody in the race was going to be working just as hard as we were for the win, and that we were one of the main targets to beat. Having confidence going into a race is always a good thing. You never want to be toeing the line thinking "Today's not the day" or "Oh man, these other guys are definitely better than we are", because if you start thinking those things then chances are you'll find yourself believing those negative thoughts are true. That being said, confidence needs to be kept at a reasonable level, so in our case after winning Wisconsin last year, we didn't want to go in with an attitude that it was ours to lose. We know that every time we race we have to work harder than anybody else if we are going to be the best. As with the race in Boston we wanted to run a great team race, and we managed to meet the expectations we set for ourselves. Even though we won the race and our team all ran great, we left the meet knowing that we could tighten up as a squad and run even better.
After enjoying our success at Wisconsin, it was time to refocus on the really important goals. Obviously it was a good confidence boost being able to run as well as we did, but as I talked about earlier, too much confidence can lead to a sense of entitlement, and if you think you've earned something before you actually achieve it, chances are someone is going to work harder than you and you'll fall short of your expectations. So even with the confidence we gained from running well at Wisconsin, this past week was one of the last big training weeks of the season, so it was essential that we put in some great work to get ready for our end of the season push. Hard work in running goes beyond showing up on workout days to run fast. At this point in the season you need to be fully committed to success if you are going to run as best you can. That means getting the right amount of sleep, eating smart meals, doing what you can to keep up with your schoolwork so it's not hanging over your head during race weeks, and most importantly, doing what your coach tells you to do. If you can be on top of your game in all other aspects of life, it allows you to be 100% committed to running when it comes time to hit it hard. Whether you're in the middle of a workout or a race, when the time comes to dig down and find that next gear, if you find yourself questioning whether or not you got enough sleep last night, or thinking about some assignment you've been putting off, it just makes it that much harder to run to your full potential. You've got to be all in all the time. If you're not, then you're going to find yourself wondering why you can't get it rolling as that front pack keeps pulling away from you.
The last big thing I want to talk about is how important your team is when it comes to cross-country. Obviously our sport has a lot to do with individual effort, but when it comes down to it, it's a team sport. When people are starting to put the hammer down in a race, it makes it way easier to match their effort if you're running with your squad. When you've got two or three other guys from your team running with you at the end of a race, and you know that you keep up with those guys all the time in workouts, it gives you a serious boost that will let you find that extra gear. If seeing a teammate in a race is enough to let you dig a little deeper, when your teammates are your closest friends it makes that boost even greater. Our team chemistry this year has been as high or higher than it has ever been and it shows. Each and every person on our team knows that they need to give everything they can to make this team great. When you have hard workouts with your teammates two or three times a week and you share the pain and effort that goes into every hard day, it gives you confidence that when you go out and race that everybody has done the work they need in order to accomplish what you want. Knowing that your teammates are there to help pull you along when you're hurting can help anybody make big moves in any race, and that's what can make a team great.
This week we'll be heading down to Florida State for the ACC Championship, and we're hoping to come away with our third straight title. Now that we're into the post-season it's time that we buckle down and take care of business. Our team is looking to prove that we're capable of being a top team in the country, and now is the time that we need to show what we can do.
