Jeffries Talks!
Cole Jeffries '10 -- For the past twenty weeks or so, I have been preparing. I haven't been preparing for the season or preparing for a fast race though. I've been preparing to be able to prepare for the fall season and running fast races then. At some point during last fall, I got 
one stress fracture in my left leg and continued to run because I was, at the time, in a varsity spot. I continued to run on it for about six more weeks to try to help the team and developed another one in my right leg. (Lesson: Do not run through bone injuries.) Initially, through my return-from-injury journey, I was supposed to be racing by the middle of February. Then it was the beginning of March, then it got pushed back to the last outdoor race of the season, and hopefully finally we decided that I should just wait until the fall. So, just recently I have started running some low mileage in order to ensure that my bones will not break again (hopefully). This was a horribly frustrating journey and anyone who has been through it can attest to that as well. But really I think the injury time off has made me realize what I want out of being a runner. When I was running in the fall, I thought that I just wanted to keep improving and run faster. However, that was a flawed perception. I realize now that there is more to running than running fast. You also have to have fun and like what you are doing, and throughout my injury I realized that the benefits (having fun through running and hanging out with teammates later) definitely outweighed the costs (sitting out for what seemed like forever).
The team opened up the outdoor season this past weekend with the Wabash Relays. During that meet four of our freshmen, Bill Kneapler, Matt Grennes, Grahm Johnson (also coming off injury), and John Henry, set a Wabash freshman DMR record. Dennis Frazee also ran what has to be at least his 6th 5000m race in a row between 15:44 and 15:47. Other highlights from the distance runners were Sam Compton-Craig and Matt Maher running their season-opening steeplechase race (and career-opening in Maher's case), Hugh Jackson finally breaking 2:00 in the 800m (1:58-59 split), and the return of Dustin Beck from injury as well. So, as I watched these guys run through near-frigid temperatures last weekend, I realized that I want to be able to do that again as soon as possible. So, as I'm running some low mileage for the next couple months I just have to realize that those days will come.