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Cross Country November 15, 2011 - by Tommy Szarka, Associate Sports Information Director

Benway Realizes Goal of Competing at Division III NCAA National Championships

Alex Benway finished 8th at the NCAA Atlantic Regionals - Photo by Alicia Perras
Surely not all cross country courses are created equally; some have lengthy hills, some have undulating ground, and some even have the runners racing along blacktop before sending the participants back into the elements.

With all of the various conditions, which this year even included an unseasonable and equally inhospitable snowstorm during the Liberty League Championships, senior cross country runner Alex Benway (Queensbury, NY) of the Clarkson University Cross Country team has been surprisingly consistent. The law of averages would produce expectations of a falter here, a misstep there, but Benway has only once been truly off his 2011 mile-pace of 5 minutes, 14 seconds in one event this season. Fortunately, he saved his best performance (thus far) of 2011 at the NCAA Atlantic Regionals last Saturday, running the familiar 8,000-meter event at the Ronald C. Hoffmann Cross Country Course on the campus of St. Lawrence in 25:25.4, the 8th best time among nearly 300 runners, which was good enough to clinch Benway a coveted spot in the NCAA National Championships.

The senior two-sport standout, who also competes in Nordic skiing at Clarkson, will head to Winneconne, WI on Thursday and compete in the Division III NCAA National Championships at 12:00 noon on Saturday, November 19. The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh will host the event at the Lake Breeze Golf Club. It’s an event that Benway has been looking forward to for some time.

“In the past 18 months….I started to get serious about my training,” Benway said. “I started running, consistently, 100 to 110 miles per week and pushing the limits of my workouts. I saw friends of mine making the move to that level of training and watched them reap the benefits, and I wanted to experience those benefits. (Clarkson Cross Country) Coach (Jim) Allott may tell you I over train, and he is probably right at times, but I want to be faster.”

As a freshman, Benway was certainly no slouch as one of the top freshmen in the conference, leading Clarkson at the NCAA Atlantic Regionals, held at St. Lawrence that season as well, by finishing in 104th place among 234 runners. However, his time of 28:04 wasn’t what he was hoping for. A year later he was 72nd overall among 264 runners, and was among the top 15 underclassmen in the event, making a push with a time of 26:54. His sophomore season was an improvement and was the beginning of a change for Clarkson’s top runner.

“Four years ago when I first started running at Clarkson, I had a few times that were decent for a high school athlete, but I really was unaware in regards to the running scene,” Benway remarked. “I attribute my increase in performance over the four years to being a student of the sport. I learned a lot from teammates, other racers, and my coach.”

In 2010, Benway made another move thanks to his new, more exhaustive regimen. In Oneonta, NY, he came in 36th overall, a second under the 26-minute mark. That improvement was a harbinger of things to come, and it provided Benway with a glimpse of what he could become as a runner.

“For the past year, my motivation was qualifying for national,” Benway said. “I would repeat that to myself and run harder. Distance running requires a tough mentality. If you can’t get past that, you’ve already lost before you get on the starting line. Call it crazy, but I enjoy the mental challenge most. I live for the last 400 meters of a race when your legs are lead, your lungs burn, and your vision is blurry. It is the ultimate runner’s high when you challenge yourself through that and come out on top, knowing that you gave it everything.

By now, no one can question Benway’s toughness, physical or mental. His rise among the region’s elite has been noticed by many and there was almost an expectation that he would reach the NCAA National Championships going into last weekend. Benway did not disappoint, posting his best 8,000-meter time of the year in 25:25.4, a 5:07 mile average that is only a second off his best mark of the year, which came during a 5,000-meter race. If he hadn’t reached his goal of qualifying for Nationals, no one would have been more disappointed than Benway. He doesn’t have to concern himself with that now, and judging from his overall perspective, he certainly won’t come up short on Saturday.

“I have thought about going to Wisconsin every day since the day after Regionals last season,” Benway said. “I look forward to representing Clarkson at a national level and to be a part of something so sought after. At the moment, I’d like to think I will run my own race. After the gun goes off this Saturday at noon, that will probably change. I have nothing to lose. I don’t want to finish the race and say, ‘what if?’”
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