Running Towards the Rays

It's the season they've been waiting all year for and though the weather these past few weeks may be trying to tell us otherwise, the men's track and field team is ready to hit their peak season as they gear up for an exciting outdoor campaign.

And following a strong indoor season, the feeling is that everybody on the team is hitting their stride as they burst their way towards competing under the rays of some natural sunlight.

"We're always focused on the outdoor season as our peak," explained head coach Matt Kerr. "Through the fall and continuing through the winter, we're always building that foundation and that strength."

"I think by the end of the indoor season you saw half of our team hitting personal bests and that's going to carry on to outdoors with more people," said junior Matthew Morano, who recorded personal bests in five different events over the winter. "We have a history of running better outdoors and we're stronger by then."

While much of the indoor season is spent at meets in the New England area, spring offers the team many opportunities to travel to some even warmer climates as the region continues to make up its mind as to which direction the thermometers should be heading.

Because of the added travel, the routine differs than in months past, with a focus on ramping up the intensity of things, while reducing the volume and providing additional rests.

"We have this schedule that brings us down south, we'll be in Florida four times, so it's a totally different environment," said Kerr. "The training, we'll scale it all back…they want to be at that peak performance outdoors. This is where they will really start to feel good, or prepared, or not. So, they've either done the work through the fall and winter, or they haven't. The guys that are prepared and put in the hard work, like Matt Morano, they're going to see great results from it."

After the team's first meet in Jacksonville, Fla., they will venture to Stanford and Miami in the coming weeks before participating in their lone New England meets of the season, both in Providence.

The season then sees them in Atlanta (Georgia Tech Invitational, April 20-21), Philadelphia for the Penn Relays (April 26-28) and Miami once again for the ACC Championships (May 10-12).

"We have the privilege to go to some really good meets," said Morano. "We'll be going to Florida a few times, Georgia Tech, Penn Relays. Being at a school in Boston, you don't really want to have the outdoor meets in Massachusetts this time of year.

"Every meet we go to is going to be great, we know the opportunity is going to be there to take advantage and do as well as we can. The indoor season is great, but you can only do so much and it's very quick. It's not enough time to build up. I think our whole team right now is really strong and outdoor is a good time to start seeing a lot of personal bests."

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Matthew Morano

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