Packed in a crowd of 204 nervous young men, Connor Reck felt prepared for cold, the tension, the race. The Harvard-bound Santa Ynez senior came in 32nd on Nov. 27 at the CIF State Cross Country Championships at Woodward Park, Fresno. “I felt completely prepared,” said the teen, who finished with a time of 16:31. “I’m getting better about relaxing under pressure.”
He has put a lot of pressure on himself as an athlete over the past year, competing both locally and nationally while garnering the attention of recruiters. “I won’t be in the top seven,” he says of his new team for the fall, but he is fine with that. “There will be plenty of races,” he says, even if it is not on the elite school’s A team.
Reck has never trained year-round, as many of his competitors both this season and next have. “I spent most of my summer playing basketball and training for middle-distance.” If he has any regrets being a varsity-level athlete in three sports, he keeps them to himself.
He was proud to have earned the chance to race against many of the nation’s top runners at the state championships.
He expects that when his training agenda changes, he will be able to improve his times. But for now, it is on to basketball. He will return to running in the spring, when track and field resumes. His advice to other would-be runners is simple. “Cross country is like any other sport,” he says. “To be really good at it, you have to do it a lot.”
And while there are many miles left to run, and many races left to be won, there is one race Reck was pleased to place last in: He was the last of the fall athletes to finish their season, having gone further than any other Pirate this year.