Photo by Erin Nelson.
John Carroll’s Arthur Langley approaches the finish line to finish third in the 31st Husky Challenge cross-country meet at Hewitt-Trussville High School on Oct. 15.
When he was in kindergarten, Arthur Langley loved getting up in the mornings to run with his dad.
He fell in love with the sport, running in local 5Ks and marathons with his dad until he started running competitively in 5th grade, Langley said.
“It’s just what we did together; it was a huge part of our bonding,” Langley said. “Then I started doing track club during the summer and I just kind of fell in love with it.”
The John Carroll Catholic High School junior recently completed the cross-country season, with an eye toward the indoor and outdoor track and field seasons. He opened the season with a win at the annual Warrior 2-Mile Invitational at Thompson on Sept. 1 and capped it off by winning the Class 5A, Section 3 meet and placing fifth in the state meet.
He said he felt confident going into the season-opening race because he knew he was prepared and had a strategy he knew could work.
Langley did a great deal of training during the summer season, only taking two weeks off after the previous track season, he said.
Week after week, Langley worked on building up his mileage which helped him prepare for the current ongoing cross country season, Langley said.
“I started building up my mileage week by week, up to where I was doing 50 consecutive mile weeks,” Langley said. “I was just building up my mileage and base for the season, which is basically just easy mileage, workouts and long runs up to 13 miles. I was really taking a higher mileage approach, which I’ve never done before.”
Langley said he normally comes with his general plan for a race two days beforehand.
Depending on the course, he said, he likes to decide where he wants to be at the mile split. This season, he’s been going out the first mile under 4:50 comfortably, he said.
“I know my competition well enough and I’ve raced them enough to know who I should be around at what points in the race… Racing people that I know I should be around as well as having an overall awareness of the field definitely helps with my race strategy,” Langley said. “My dad has always told me ‘Run the first two thirds of the race with your head and the last with your heart.’ I always think about that.”
Langley’s plan for the rest of the cross-country season was to be smart, train hard and prepare for the finishing stretch.“I’m probably going to have one more big training block before I start to taper down for sectionals and state,” Langley said in September. “We have three more meets which are the Husky Challenge, sectionals and state. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season, focusing on state has always been the primary goal.”
Langley said though he’s always loved to run and been passionate about it, he didn’t really find the success he wanted in track and cross country until his freshman year of high school.
“My 7th and 8th grade years at Homewood, I ran awful races on the state course,” Langley said. “It wasn’t until 9th grade year at John Carroll that I’ve always had a good race there. It took me two bad races there to have a good third one.”
