Runner sets high season goals
If he had it to do over, Derek Schuh would probably have kept up his workouts.
“I was working out regularly right up until winter break,” the senior Central Valley sprinter said. “But I stopped and didn’t do anything coming into the start of the track season.
“Bad idea.”
Coming off his second straight State 4A boys high school track meet last spring, Schuh has lofty goals for his senior season – a season that started off with the usual question.
“Every year, when the season first starts, I ask myself why I run,” he said. “And then I get out there in a race and I remember why I love this sport.”
What helped motivate him in his early-season workouts was freshman sprinter Brad Whitley.
“This is my third year on the varsity and this was the first year where someone other than the seniors set the early pace,” Schuh said. “It says a lot about how talented he is, but at the same time, it really helped get the rest of us motivated.”
The workouts have been hard and productive, and the early-season results have been promising.
Schuh figures to run his first 400 meter race of the season Saturday at the Pasco Invitational. Already he’s turned in a 22.3-second 200-meter time, the third-best mark ever at Central Valley and three-tenths of a second off the school record.
“I’ve usually started right out running the 400, but this year, since I was struggling a little bit to get into shape, we started me out in the 100 and 200 and let me work up to the 400,” he said. “With all that, I was surprised to go out and, boom, run a 22.3.”
Schuh’s 22.3-second 200-meter time this season would have earned a fourth-place finish at last year’s state meet. A 22.0 would have placed second.
Even while the weather promises to stay on the cool side for the foreseeable future, track competition starts to heat up after spring break.
Schuh said he’s looking forward to running in a big meet against tough competition.
“Big meets don’t bother me,” he said. “I look forward to running against some good competition, but I’ve always been able to focus in on what I have to do. In fact, I’ve run some of my best times in the far outside lane.”
Each of Schuh’s three sprints require something different.
The 100, the benchmark of the sprinting world, is all about speed and technique. But to excel at the 200 and 400, Schuh said, you have to love to run the curve in a track.
“You either love it or hate it,” he said. “I love running the curve. You have the one curve in the 200. I just try to go as hard as I can the whole race.
“With the 400, you start out fast in the first 100 meters. You try to maintain your technique through the first curve and you’re trying to run smoothly through the back 100 meters. But when I get to the final curve, that’s where I let it all out.”
Schuh’s primary competition in the Greater Spokane League figures to be Lewis and Clark junior Andre Jennings, already a two-time state veteran in the 200.
“Andre didn’t run when we had our dual meet with them,” Schuh said. “I was disappointed I didn’t get a chance to run against him. That would have really given me a chance to see where I am.”
Schuh’s season goals are lofty.
“My goals are to set school records in all three sprints, the 100, 200 and 400, place in the top three at state in the 400 and help get our relay teams to state,” he said. “I really want to help some of our young guys get their first taste of state, and the relay is where some of them can do it.
“Right now, our 4x400 relay team has one of the best times in the state.”
In a sport made up mostly of individual events, the relays are a singularly team effort.
“You spend so much time on your individual events and your own technique,” Schuh said. “But the relay teams are all about being a team. We’ve got a close group – we all hang out together, we eat lunch together. And we all work out together.
“It helps to have a bunch of guys who can push each other every day in practice. I think it makes us all that much better.”