Phil Duncan is one of the top runners in the state this year. He followed up a great track season with a breakthrough year thus far in cross country, including a 15:25 PR at the flrunners.com Invitational. He has been through some highs and lows in his career including breaking his body with 80 mile weeks. But through his struggles he has learned patience and that each workout has a purpose. We'll take the journey with him through the remainder of this season with this weekly feature.
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Hey everybody,
My name is Phil Duncan, and I run for Boone High School in Orlando. I was really honored when Jason asked me to keep a weekly journal for the season, and hopefully you guys will find it interesting.
Here’s a brief running background: I started running in middle school, but not very seriously Track was just one of the five sports I did and I didn’t really focus on it that much. I ran 6:35 in 6th grade, 6:20 for 7th grade, and 5:39 for the 8th grade so, I was alright, but nothing special. Freshman year during summer school, I decided on not playing football and joined cross country and ending up improving a lot, but then again, I wasn’t anything special. After running good, but not great, freshman times for track, I then decided I was going to try to break 16 minutes for 5k as a senior. I had no idea what I was doing, but I ran very consistently for the entire year, averaging 35-50 miles a week. I got to run some decent times and realized I had the potential to be even better than I thought was possible for me earlier. A disappointing 10:04/11th place finish at states after a 9:35 PR at regionals really fuel my fired for my junior. That summer, I pushed too hard trying to run 75-80 miles a week at 6:30/mile average. Furthermore, I was only 15 and had a lot of maturing to do, mentally and physically. A stress fracture (surprise, surprise) derailed me until the week before the first meet, UF. I ran 17:29 and I worked my way to 16:01 by regionals on 15-20 miles a week. After that, I got too ahead of myself and blew up massively at states. After that, I funneled my disappointment into a controlled training schedule, very gradually building to low-to-mid 50’s for track. I did a lot of stretching and form drills and even more strides. I ended up running huge PRs, but I hit the workouts too hard, too early and that caught up with me towards the end of April. I also got very sick the week of regionals and then states, which also contributed to a disappointing performance. This summer, I increased the quality and quantity of my running to mid 60s.
Anyways, this season has been really exciting both as a runner and fan of the sport. The level of competition has risen dramatically. I credit this lot to flunners and distancepreps. The top guys and girls see what they have to go up against and work a lot harder. Also, they have facilitated a lot of the “showdowns” that have allow us runners to compete at the highest level we can.
This season, I started doing my workouts being more cognizant that each workout has a purpose and they are not all to kill yourself. I always want to push as hard as I can which is not the best for a postseason peak and long-term development. In all my races so far, I’ve faded towards the end even though that’s usually the best part of my race. Especially at flrunners when I expected to do much better, it was really disappointing to be drop so much by Max and Elliot, albeit they are both great runners. I started having doubts about how hard I worked over the summer and if I should even go to Footlocker South. However, the last few weeks, my training has come together beautifully and I feel confident that I will be able to compete well at the end of November. I really wished I had raced at Prestate, getting an extra workout in was beneficial. Last week, I did 5x1200m on Tuesday, which was a tempo effort, 15x300 on Thursday which was a huge-confidence-booster, a 7.5 mile progression run on Saturday, and 13.3 miles on Sunday. Jl has improved everyday from his upper respiratory infection and finally has been doing workouts with me and should be ready to race for real for the first time in a long, long while.
Our next meet is Hagerty, which will is mostly a local meet. There will be around ten sub-16 guys there, so I’m looking forward to the competition without a huge amount of pressure. I will be trying out some new racing tactics to see if they work. Then, the postseason begins!
Until next week,
Phil
