While training for running, these athletes spend almost as much time in the pool as they do on the track.
A group of athletes from Española and Peñasco swim back and forth for two hours on hot sunny July days. And then they hit the track.
In the pool, they can work on building lung capacity and stronger muscles with lower risk of injury. Once they’re worn out, they can practice the feeling of running on tired legs.
“Most individuals will get injured at some point in their career in the running stage, if they attend university,” said Scott Valdez, who coaches the group. “It just takes the stress off their joints and bones, and it helps us develop their aerobic capacity much larger.”
The local athletes include brothers Jude and Jeremiah Martinez of Peñasco, Elijah Martinez, who will be a freshman at Española Valley, and Anika Calvert who will start in the fall at Academy for Technology and the Classics in Santa Fe. The group is training after strong performances at the regional championships, and will compete at the USA Track & Field National Junior Olympic Championships on July 26-30 in Eugene, Ore.
Jude Martinez, a rising junior at Peñasco, is the defending state cross country champion.
Perhaps the biggest factor in competing at nationals is the sudden elevation change. Local athletes have been training and competing at about 6,000 feet or higher for their entire lives. Suddenly, they’ll be dropped in Oregon — 426 feet above sea level. And that leads to big changes in their body with increased oxygen levels.
To account for that, they compete at shorter-interval, higher-intensity training. When they get to Oregon, they should be able to run at that pace for longer. And in aerobic trainings, they focus more on heart rate than on time.
Valdez coordinates athletes from schools around the area to prepare them for eventually competing at the college level. He said it started almost by accident. In 2011, he began training with Isaiah Rodarte, a Peñasco athlete who holds two state records and went on to compete and coach at Adams State in Alamosa, Colo.
“It kind of just snowballed into there, people started joining in,” he said. “They work really good as groups. Once they meet each other, they don’t care what school they’re from.”
At regionals, in Albuquerque July 6-9, Jeremiah Martinez finished eighth in the 15-16 800 meters and seventh in the 1500 meters. Jude was fifth in the 1500-meter race and fifth in the 3000.
The team of Jeremiah Martinez, Jude Martinez, Elijah Martinez and Xavier Pecastaing from Albuquerque was, according to results on athletic.net, the only entry in the 15-16 4×800-meter finals, and ran it in 9 minutes, 40 seconds.
“It’s a different competition, a lot of times they’re running quicker, or they might be a bit older,” Elijah Martinez said. “But you’ve got to put it all out there on the track.”
Elijah Martinez and others will also enter the steeplechase, though they have never competed in it before, since it was not part of the regional competition. But Valdez said it will be easy to learn a new event given the variety and difficulty of courses they race for cross country.
Anika Calvert’s team finished second in the girls 13-14 4×800 meters with a time of 12:01.
“I’m coming back for first,” Calvert said.
Helping out with the team is Gilbert Valdez (Scott Valdez’s third cousin), a several-time state champion in both cross country and track and field from Peñasco, who will be running with University of New Mexico in the upcoming year. John Hall, who runs with New Mexico Highlands, along with Valdez help pace the runners when they train.
“They can sustain on a 5-minute pace like they’re jogging,” Scott Valdez said. “Gilly and John can set up front and just pull them smoothly, so that way these guys learn how to run at those speeds.”
And perhaps some day the current young crop will return as college athletes in their own right to coach the next group.
As they continue training on what have been some of the hottest days in recorded Earth history, according to scientists, they keep finding motivation to work to compete with the best.
“I give them credit, because most people wouldn’t be out here in 95-degree weather, willing to swim and then go run,” Valdez said. “They show up.”