Braelyn Combe had a plan for Nike Indoor Nationals, and leading for most of it wasn't part of it.
The COROS NextGen athlete from Santiago High School in Corona, California had visualized every version of the race, and in every version, the thing that mattered most was the same: win. She'd watched the NCAA indoor mile championship earlier that week and noted how the field had bunched up and let the race come down to a kick.
She figured high school nationals might look exactly the same.
She was right. She just didn't expect to be the one guiding the pack.
A Chip on Her Shoulder and a California Kid on the Indoor Circuit
Braelyn doesn't do indoor track. Not really. As a Southern California runner, her season doesn't typically open until spring, so the decision to race Nike Indoor Nationals meant cramming a preparation block into a window that most of her competition had weeks more time to develop.
She also carried something into the season that's harder to quantify than fitness: the sting of not making NXN as a senior after qualifying as a junior. "That was a hard pill to swallow," she said. "That kind of put a big chip on my shoulder going into track."
That chip has a way of sharpening things. Heading into the winter, the emphasis in training shifted -- not away from what had always been her weapon (speed, a kick that closes out races), but toward what she'd been avoiding. "The workouts I kind of hated and neglected last year," she said, "which is the tempo and like longer threshold stuff." The two-day workout structure -- one hard session early in the week, a lighter day if there's no race -- got built around sharpening both ends: the 300s and 150s for raw speed, and the longer threshold runs for the engine underneath.
Building Toward NIN: Three Races and Three Data Points
Braelyn's coach built a three-race staircase leading into nationals. Each step was designed to answer a specific question...
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Braelyn Combe had a plan for Nike Indoor Nationals, and leading for most of it wasn't part of it.
The COROS NextGen athlete from Santiago High School in Corona, California had visualized every version of the race, and in every version, the thing that mattered most was the same: win. She'd watched the NCAA indoor mile championship earlier that week and noted how the field had bunched up and let the race come down to a kick.
She figured high school nationals might look exactly the same.
She was right. She just didn't expect to be the one guiding the pack.
A Chip on Her Shoulder and a California Kid on the Indoor Circuit
