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.
Now that Conference weekend has passed, we are getting deep into post-season running. As I mentioned last week, we had our ACC Championship meet this past Friday down in Tallahassee, hosted by Florida State. Our goal was to go out and do what we've been doing, improve on how well we can run as a team, and to try and take home our 3rd ACC title in a row. We felt strongly that we could accomplish all three of those goals, and luckily we succeeded in all of them.
ACCs is without a doubt one of the highlights of the cross country season. Running for a conference championship will always be an incredible experience, and it means a lot to be able to compete with all of the other talented teams that are part of the ACC. Because we wanted to make sure we had a good race, it was all about sticking with what has been working for us so far this year -- running smart races and working as a pack. The results and splits from the race show that we did a great job of doing just that. Winning as a team was a great feeling, it's always special to be able to come out on top, especially at these bigger meets. For the older guys on the team it meant even a little bit more, because with the win this weekend they have now won the Conference championship every year that they have been competing at Syracuse (Big East once and ACCs three times). Four Conference titles in four years is not an easy thing to accomplish, so it was definitely something that made everybody proud of how well the program has been doing. We definitely enjoyed coming away with another ACC trophy, but we knew that it was important to get refocused on some of the bigger goals we've set for ourselves.
This week is our last week of the season without a race, meaning that this will be the last chance for us to get in some quality training. Getting the last set of hard workouts in before we settle into back-to-back weeks of racing is important, because we're at the point where almost all of the physical preparation is done, and after this week all we can do is rest up properly and show up on race day with the right mindset to get things done. And that's arguably the most important part of race day -- showing up ready to put in serious work. Our race at ACCs was a little different from normal races, because the start time was significantly earlier than most of our other races have been. Even though we had to change up our prep for the race a bit, the most important thing we had to do to get ready was not let the change rattle us. It's important to keep in mind that everybody runs the same race, so every person will have to adapt to and deal with all of the same changes. You can't let an early race time, bad weather, or a poorly kept course affect how you race, because everybody starts at the same time, runs in the same weather and on the same course. It's important to not let any doubts creep into your mind because of something you can't control, you just need to show up willing to give everything you've got.
Next week we've got the NCAA Northeast Regional meet back in Franklin Park, which will be the first 10k we run this season. Making the jump up from 8k to 10k is definitely something you notice as you run a race, but as I just talked about, it's something that everybody has to deal with, so it's important not to worry too much about something that affects everybody in the race. Also, most guys at this point have raced a 10k at least once in their career, and even if they haven't, most workouts in the fall are geared towards preparing people for the championship 10ks at the end of the year, so we are definitely ready for it. As I mentioned last time, it was great getting to race Franklin Park earlier in the season, and will be a pretty incredible experience for me to race on that course again. It's going to be great to run another cross country race back in Boston, and it just makes it even better considering how special of a course Franklin Park is being a Massachusetts native.