The first obstacle at UAA was making the travel team.

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coming from a background where their summer and winter base training is more important than the in-season training — which needs to be the case at this level), but he just ‘got it.’ He understood how important consistent communication is, how important team camaraderie is, how important taking care of business in the classroom is. All without us having to tell him. Just taking care of all ‘the little stuff’ that makes a big difference in college. You usually don’t see this maturity until much later in college.”

The six-time Crimson Bears Region V champion in cross-country and track who twice placed in the top 10 at state entered UAA with personal bests of 16:17 in the 5K and 4:32 in the 1,600. He has eclipsed those marks.

“Mileage and intensity are all great factors, but the biggest thing to keep improving is consistency,” Vera-Alvarado said. “My coach said, ‘your freshman year you train to train and your later years country wise email marketing list you train to compete.’ We all get individual training plans depending on our speed and high school background.”

Vera-Alvarado came from a 30- to 40-mile-a-week background and is up to 65.

“It’s not a given you will get faster,” he said. “I have teammates that their PR was from freshman year and they haven’t since…I’m young for my age (18), still developing…My coach said I responded well to higher mileage and this summer I will probably train at 70 miles per week. This extra five miles for four or five weeks are probably going to take me to the lower 25 minutes in the 8K, that’s the plan…The more you go down the line, the more miles you have to run, the more reps you have to do, the more cross training, the more time you have to put down to get quicker.”


“That’s one of the biggest things that is different from high school,” he said. “You’re always on your toes…You’re always training for something…nothing is given, you can’t let your guard down. In high school you can just focus on that race and then if you don’t have a good day then you’re like, ‘OK, I have the next race.’ But for college you want to prepare as it is your last race. You don’t know if you’ll have another race or even the chance to run in that weather again. I always prepare like I’m not gonna have the same certain test or if the day is perfect I’m like, OK, this is my chance, maybe my only chance, to PR because we also travel less for college…You’re always trying to stay on top of your game and be prepared because, I don’t know, I guess you’re trying to show your coach that you’re capable of doing what you’ve been training for so long.”