Paul Roberts overcame two years of regional disappointment with a big qualifying race at this year's NXR-SW. Photo by Alan Versaw.
Success in the running sports came early and often for Paul Roberts. Long before Roberts was tearing up high school cross country courses around the state of Colorado, Roberts was winning age category titles at the Bolder Boulder.
And so, it might have seemed more natural to ask when Roberts would make the NXN field than if he would ever make it. But, that would be to ignore the usual progression of these things. Though Roberts definitely had aspirations from a young age, more often than not such aspirations encounter some turbulence along the way. As Roberts explains:
I think it was somewhere around sixth grade that I started thinking about post season races like NXN and Foot Locker when my older brother Andrew was running in high school. He just missed Foot Locker his senior year. Going into the race my freshman year, I thought I had an outside chance of making it, but I didn't run quite as well as I would have liked to, and the top five guys ran extremely well. Then going into my sophomore year, I again thought that I had a good chance of making it to NXN, however I went out way too slow and was unable to get back to the front. I'm thankful that I was healthy and able to give a good effort this year.
Roberts' "good effort" was a personal best of 14:57 and fifth place at NXR-SW, enough to advance him to nationals. The two weeks of anticipation between the regional and national races has now nearly run its own course. When the starting cannon fires on Saturday, the regional good effort no longer means a thing.
Roberts' final sharpening workout on Tuesday was a 5 x 1K threshold workout with friend and teammate Joel Such. Roberts has worked a race plan with his coaches, but he allows that "it will depend on how the race plays out along with the course conditions. The goal will be to be up front and to keep an eye on folks like Tanner Anderson and hopefully be able to go when they do."
If you watched Cerake Geberkidane's race last year at NXN, you have some idea of just how much difficulty is packed into those two sentences. The pace of the lead group is ridiculously difficult. Covering the break when it is made is more difficult still. If there is a moderating factor in all of this it is that a new course this year means that previous NXN experience means less than it did last year. Neither the NXN veterans nor the first timers yet have a clear idea how this year's course is going to play out under national championship race conditions.
Still, no matter how you look at it, the challenges before Roberts are enormous. But, at Roberts' level, obstacles are simply a part of the fun, "Obstacles are why I love the sport of running. There are many life applications that come from overcoming the challenges that present themselves with strong opponents and different cross country courses."
And a fire hose of challenges and obstacles awaits Roberts on Saturday.
Once the race he has trained for all season is done on Saturday afternoon, there will come a brief period of winding down for Roberts. The intensity of the season will give way to "a couple of short-mileage running weeks (a sort of break), finishing up school with the end of the semester, and getting ready to celebrate Christmas and the Lord's birth with all my family." Even for the top runners, there comes a time of reprieve.
Until that time, however, you can figure it's all about "overcoming the obstacles that present themselves." After all, that's how he got here in the first place.
