Since the beginning of summer, the cross country athletes have been waking up for morning practices, before the sun even rises, just in preparation for their early season. Junior Braden Lange is very familiar with these intense practices, and also just what it takes to fully commit yourself to distance running. This past Saturday, Lange and the rest of the Cross Country team competed in the Southlake Invitational, a 5k which takes place annually at the Bob Jones Park in Southlake, Texas.
At this meet, not only did Lange place seventh out of 295 runners in the 6A varsity boys race, but he also ran an impressive time of 15:35, which was his newest personal record. This was the third time running at this meet, so his past experience made the course seem much simpler, in comparison to that of freshman year. Maybe, after all, the third time really is a charm.
“The Southlake course is pretty flat and the weather was in the mid sixties with no wind, so it was the perfect day to [personal record],” Lange said.
Being one of the top runners on the team, Lange knows importance of not only pushing his own physical and mental limits, but also supporting and to acting as a strong backbone for his teammates. When paying attention to the social environment of the cross country team, one take away that could be received by anyone watching is the great leadership all the runners show to one another. The large family-like support system within the cross country team is something that many of the runners thrive off of, including Lange. Although the race times are personal to the runners, the runners continue to stand stronger together, always eager to lead.
“We’re always able to to push each other to fight through the harder workouts, even when we ourselves feel like we need to drop out,” Lange said.
These leadership qualities that the cross country runners embody are essential to everyday practice, but are crucial in those times where a fellow teammate hits a road block. According to Lange, seeing the little improvements in previous mistakes is one of the main reasons to run. In the end, it’s just all about overcoming those obstacles, which is what running is all about. The Southlake meet proved to be one of those obstacles.
“It’s always frustrating when your workouts aren’t improving at all, but it’s important to keep pushing each week, and to fix those little mistakes, even with the help of teammates,” Lange said.
However, Lange showed he could get past it. One tool that is beneficial when running in a race, he says, is a “race plan.” A “race plan” is just a mental guide to note as you run to keep the desired pace and to finish with an improved time. According to Lange, his race plan is to start out aggressively with the most elite runners, hold on with everything he can, and to speed up in the final mile. As a result, he was able to blow his old personal record out of the water, which was just under 16 minutes.
Recently, Lange was also ranked the eighth fastest male runner in 6A Texas schools, but with the cross country meets usually only a week apart from each other, Lange has to stay on his A game. Lange hopes to run in college and to continue to drop his 5k time even more this year.
Lange said, “The satisfaction of running is when you finish a race and you can really tell how much time you’ve taken off from the week before, and how much you’ve accomplished.”