Five Kilometers. Three point one miles. 5,000 meters. 16,404 feet.

Junior Sam Steinmetz focuses on every step.

“I just think about the race. It’s as hard as I can go, as fast as I can go. Nothing more, nothing less,” Steinmetz said.

Steinmetz has run cross country since seventh grade, has been a part of North’s program for the past three years and has big goals for his junior season.

“I want to break 16 minutes in the 5K…I just plan to keep running, keep improving, until I get there,” Steinmetz said.

Senior Draven Martinez also hopes to make his senior season the best yet.

“I keep working every day, keep giving everything at practice every day,” Martinez said. I am a leader for the team, I make sure that everyone is also putting in 110 percent each day.”

Martinez has been running for seven years now and has goals for the team to win state this year.

“My favorite part is winning as a team,” Martinez said. “When I’m done running and see my teammates coming in, and we go up to the podium and they’re like, ‘North is number one.’ It’s just something that sticks with you for a while.” Last school year, Martinez took AP Psychology, which is taught by Richard Sluder; the Cross Country and Track & Field head coach.

“Just having an idea of some of the psychological principles helps me understand,” Sluder said. “A typical coach might say ‘stop being lazy’ or ‘learn to work harder,’ but having some of that basic psychology background, it helps me remind myself that kids might be going through things in their life, or that they are trying, and just might not be having a good day.

Similarly, Martinez agrees that psychology has helped him in his running.

“[AP Psychology] helped me understand that sometimes you have to look at things in a different way,” Martinez said. “If I want to do something, and doing it the way I’ve always done it isn’t working, I take a step back, think about it, and think about a new way to approach it.”

Freshman Lucy Nevins has a different way of getting through her setbacks.

“I just try to move past it and work even harder the next time to make up for whatever I lost,” Nevins said. “If I have a week with low mileage or I just feel slow, I just try to work even harder after that.” Nevins emphasizes her struggles with the mental aspect of running more than the physical aspects.

“My biggest mental challenge is getting over fear of other people being better than me and getting too worried about other people around me than to focus on doing my best personally,” Nevins said. “I just have to focus on my race.”

Sluder teaches his athletes how to persevere in the face of adversity using his psychological knowledge.

“The most important thing that I think we teach them is resiliency,” Sluder said “How to bounce back from setbacks and how to be a good leader and a good person. I think if you’re not a good teammate and you’re not a good leader, you’re probably not going to have great results anyway.” Even though cross country is an individual sport, Sluder still places emphasis on being a good leader and a team player in order to succeed.

“We have five pillars that we say our program is built off of, so we really built off those five pillars a lot instead of just saying ‘we want to win this meet,’ ‘we want to win that meet,’ we feel if we can achieve filling those five pillars, working hard, being a good leader, things like that, our results in meets will come,” Sluder said.

Nevins finds mental aspects of cross country to be challenging.

“The workouts are really hard to push yourself to keep going, it can be really hot and it’s really difficult sometimes,” Nevins said. “Just the mental part of it to when you’re thinking ‘I still have so much to go,’ to get through that and know that it is worth it in the end.”

Sluder’s knowledge of psychology allows him to teach his athletes a mindset to help them overcome their mentalities.

“Don’t be scared of hard work.” Sluder said. “Your mind wants to tell you ‘no’ when bad things are happening. When you think about running, your heart rate increases, and you’re sweating, and your blood pressure changes, and your body says ‘this is scary, I don’t want to do this,’ and I think that’s one of the things you have to do in any sport, is be willing to push your limits.”