When the 2015 cross country season ended, Jose Colon stood to be the No. 1 runner on the Nottingham High boys’ team. As things evolved, he returned as the No. 3 man and could not have been happier about it.
After all, it was his doing.
Colon was the Northstars’ second best runner at the completion of his sophomore year, behind senior Anthony Martinez. It was only his first year running the sport so it could have been huge for his ego to come back as top dog as a junior.
But Colon wanted the Stars to win dual meets. Therefore, he recruited Jonathan Torres from the soccer team and Kenly Souffrant from the football team. The seniors are one and two, respectively, which helped Nottingham to a 2-2-1 record in its first four meets and left Colon with something to shoot for.
“I like chasing Jon and Kenly,” he said. “If we didn’t have them we wouldn’t have a win this year. I like being number three trying to challenge them, because it gets me a lot faster.
“I kind of convinced Kenly to come out during spring track, and Jon a little bit. But coach convinced Jon more. I’ll keep working, I think I can still be number one.”
Dave Tees has returned to run the program after Melissa Foley had to step down for maternity leave. The new coach has enjoyed watching Colon take on the challenge of tracking down the new seniors.
“He is constantly set on trying to catch the one and the two, that’s the goal he sets at practices; to try and keep as close as he can,” Tees said. “He kind of uses them as his measuring sticks so he can see how well he’s doing.”
In fact, he pays strict attention to how he’s doing.
“He times his runs,” Tees said. “He’s got his watch, he compares each time he runs on a different training course. He’s checking his watch and figuring out how much better he did. He gauges his time off the one and the two because he wants to move up.”
Growing up, Colon always had speed but when he got to Nottingham he wanted to play basketball and suited up for the Stars’ freshman basketball team. After running sprints for spring track, distance coach Andrew Parsons noticed in warm-ups that Colon had strong endurance.
“He told me I would be good in distance, I tried it out and ended up liking it,” Colon said. “I noticed I was getting better and better and saw how much I liked it. I talked to some friends on spring track about cross country, I signed up and liked training for it. It was fun.”
He quit basketball and ran cross country, winter and spring track last year. In cross country, his personal best was 19:27 at Veterans Park and 19:20 at Mercer County Park. In his first two races this year, he clocked an 18:48 at Veterans and an 18:47 at Mercer.
In a meet that featured 106 runners at Mercer County Park in September, Souffrant and Torres finished first and third, while Colon was a respectable 18th.
“This is my first year seeing him, and I think he has great potential,” Tees said. “He’s out running a little bit in the summer, and he needs to kind of take that next step after he’s done spring track. He needs to use the summer as his endurance period to come into the next fall.
“After he has an endurance pace, you can train him on a big program where they’re averaging 50 miles a week. And then, he comes into the fall season and tapers from that particular point through the meet season and championships, while focusing on speed at that particular point.”
Colon is disappointed with his workouts this past summer. He would attend coach’s practices on Tuesday and Thursday and also ran two more times during the week, but said, “I did long runs, mostly endurance based, but I didn’t run as much as I should have. I didn’t realize I needed to do as much.”
One thing Colon has going for him this year is that there is a bigger group of runners, as Nottingham’s roster went from nine to 14. And he has two runners to try and beat out instead of just one.
“It was hard pushing yourself last year,” he said. “We only had one win last year, and only two of us were under 20 pushing hard each meet.”
His strategy was pretty basic.
“I’d just push to stay with (Martinez),” he said. “In the meets, I’d always keep my eyes on him. He wasn’t that far ahead of me.”
Colon’s goals this year are to have success at the Mercer County and Central Jersey Group III meets. He has two different mindsets while running—one for races, the other for practice.
“During practice, I just think about stuff that has nothing to do with running,” he said. “I think about homework, what I want to do later on, who I want to hang out with, anything that keeps my mind off the pain.
“In a race, even at the start I’m thinking of the finish. I’m in pain but I’m not going to slow down, I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep racing, and I have the mentality to race good. But most of the time I just think about the finish.”
And he thinks about finishing ahead of the two newcomers who he couldn’t be happier to have on the team.
Nottingham High XC runner Jose Colon finishes a race at Mercer County Park this year.,
